
Class t'}V\ \ 2. S 

Book ■ (?.; 5 ^ 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




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Sunday Morning Talks 

Prepared for 

Bible Class No. 20 

of the 

Presbyterian Congregation 

of 

Sewickley, Pennsylvania 

By 

George H. Christy 



TLbc lknlcfterbocl?er ipress 

New York 

1912 



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Copyright, 1912 

BY 

SARAH H. CHRISTY 



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FOREWORD 

The following lessons were prepared by my 
husband some time before his death, with the 
intention of publishing them. But for reasons 
that seemed good to himself this was not done 
during his lifetime. 

I now print them and send them to the mem- 
bers of Bible Class No. 20, and to other friends of 
my husband who valued the results of his studyj 
as a memorial of one who truly ** opened up the 
Scriptures " for others. 

May these pages bring him again before us, 
refresh in our minds his long and earnest labors in 
the faith that he so firmly held, and incline us all 
more faithfully to heed his teachings. May we 
follow him in so far as he followed **the Master*' 
whom he loved and served. 

S. H. C. 



Ul 



INTRODUCTORY 

It is not a mere platitude nor a glittering 
generality to say that no book in the world will 
better repay careful, continuous, and devout 
study than the Bible. This is as true as that two 
and two make four. 

No book was ever published before or since, 
which gives or contains any one of the following 
specifications : 

1. More original and authentic history. 

2. As many and as truthful biographies of the 
men (and women too) who have made history. 

3. As much original information concerning 
the beginnings of things. 

4. An equal delineation of the origin and 
growth of nations and civilization. 

5. A larger or finer collection of the folk-lore 
of a remote antiquity. 

6. As much clean, pure, and elegant prose 
literature. 

7. An equal amount and variety of highly 
sublime poetry — dramatic, epic, and lyric, includ- 
ing a wide range of old songs and ballads. 

8. A better system of law. 

9. A better code of morals. 



vi Introductory 



10. More incentives to clean thoughts, honest 
lives, and upright business dealings. 

11. A better exposition of the equal rights of 
all men. 

12. A better system of religion. 

13. A better plan by which to make saints out 
of sinners, and good citizens out of all men. 

14. A better knowledge of eternal life and how 
to attain it. 

15. A better scheme for the regeneration of 
the world and the redemption of humanity. 

16. More original research that would with- 
stand reasonable, intelligent, and scholarly critic- 
ism. 

While the Bible is not, and does not profess to be, 
a scientific book, its science is quite as correct as 
much that was taught in the schools of Christen- 
dom when the writer was a boy, and perhaps as 
correct as a good deal that is taught yet. 

But the Bible has its defects; namely: (i) It 
says very little about theology; (2) less about 
church organization and government; (3) less yet 
about chtu-ch ritual and forms of worship; (4) 
still less about creeds. Probably the writers of 
the Bible did not regard these as matters of much 
importance. 



CONTENTS 






Jesus of Nazareth, I . 


. 




PAGE 
I 


Jesus of Nazareth, II . 


. 




15 


The Writings of Paul 


. 




28 


Paul's Gospel 


. 




45 


A Japhetic Gospel 


• 




59 


Paul and the Empire . 


• 




69 


Acts of the Apostles, I 


. 




80 


Acts of the Apostles, II 


. 




95 


John's Gospel 


• 




116 


Peter 


. 




130 


The Resurrection; The 
Messianic Prophecy 


Future 


State; 


. 143 


Protestantism 


. 




• 157 


Lost Beliefs 


. 




■ 173 


Revelation . 


. 




. 190 


A Future Life . 


, , 




. 215 



Vll 



vm 



Contents 





PACK 


Satan 


. 231 


Sin 


. 240 


Three Ancient Traditions . 


. 247 


Some Penalties and a Promise . 


. 262 


The Story of the Creation 


269 


Biblical Revision 


. 278 


Index 


. 289 



Sunday Morning Talks 



Sunday Morning Talks 



JESUS OF NAZARETH 
I 

The divinity of our Saviour is a subject I would 
not undertake to discuss. I accept it as a matter 
of faith, and accordingly believe it, but I do not 
understand it. How it could be ''manifested in 
the flesh," was a ''great mystery" even to a man 
of the giant intellect and high spirituality of Paul 
(I. Tim. iii., i6). He made no effort to explain it. 
Neither does John who simply records it as a 
fact (John i., 14). What neither Paul nor John 
could explain, the rest of us may as well pass by. 

But I think I can, at least in a feeble sort of way, 
understand His human side or element: what He 
was as a man among men ; living and talking with 
them in daily unrestrained intercourse; heaHng 
their sick whenever opportunity offered ; sympathiz- 
ing in their troubles; feeding them when out of 
reach of a normal supply of food ; undergoing their 
privations; poor in purse as the poorest of them, 



Jesus of Nazareth 



more homeless than any of them; friendless Him- 
self except as He made friends — and these, 
gathered from the poor and the illiterate, were 
largely composed of the outcasts of society, the 
publicans of one sex and the hariots of the other; 
and all considered as unfit to be numbered with 
humanity (John vii., 49) — hated, reviled, and 
hounded to death by the orthodox clergy of the 
church of which He was a sincere and consistent 
member, even while He was teaching by word and 
illustrating in His life a holy and perfect standard 
of living and doing; and finally put to death at 
their instance on a criminal charge which they 
knew to be false, and, as his sole reward, meeting 
death in its most painful and ignominious form. 
I think I can, at least partially, understand a life 
of that kind. To a limited extent, I can also 
understand His resurrection. To my apprehen- 
sion, the restoration of Hfe is no more of a mystery 
than its original beginning — in fact, less of a 
mystery imder our present system of psychology, 
which, however, may be all wrong. The number 
and amount of the things that we think we know 
but do not know cannot be reckoned. 

Though bom of royal blood, Jesus-ben-Mary 
was brought up in comparative poverty, and, so 
far as is known, with only such a limited education 
as was then within the reach of every Jewish boy 
of the peasant class (verse 15). The place of His 
reputed nativity was obscure (John i., 46). His 
home province, Galilee, only himg on the ragged 



Jesus of Nazareth 



edge of respectability (John vii., 52); and his 
occupation, while not disreputable, barred Him 
from admission to the inner circle of either social 
or church life (Matt, xiii., 55). Though it is 
occasionally alluded to, it seems that no considera- 
tion was ever paid to His royal descent, nor does 
He ever speak of it as constituting any support for 
his claims. Up to the age of thirty years, He was 
apparently as obscure an individual — that is, in 
respect of public fame or notoriety — as could have 
been found in the ranks of the Jewish peasantry 
**from Dan to Beersheba. " The episode of 
Luke ii., 41-51, had during the intervening eighteen 
years evidently been forgotten by everybody 
except Himself and His mother, and even she did 
not imderstand its significance. To the aged and 
venerable rabbis of the temple He was nothing but 
a precocious youth whom, in His absence, they 
would soon forget, much as the present generation 
has forgotten the "Boy Preacher," or "Blind 
Tom," the musician of thirty years ago. 

The news of the great revival inaugiu*ated by 
his remote cousin, John the Baptist, down in the 
Jordan valley, reached His ears in the out-of-the- 
way village of Nazareth. John's revival methods 
corresponded somewhat closely with those of the 
modem camp-meeting. Whether Jesus, when He 
joined the crowds that flocked to John's baptism, 
was actuated by any other motives than those 
which dominated them, or by the same motives 
as lead modem believers to the excitements and 



Jesus of Nazareth 



experiences of camp-meeting life, can only be a 
matter of surmise. 

That John was personally acquainted with 
Jesus is at least highly probable, if not positively 
certain. John was fully satisfied of his own in- 
capacity to carry on his revival work to perfect 
results; and he at once announced Jesus as his 
divinely appointed successor, and as one who 
could do and would do what it was useless for him, 
John, to attempt (Luke iii. , 1 6, 1 7) . By a ceremony 
of his own, not wholly unknown in Judaism, but 
in John's hands invested with a new meaning, he 
called Jesus out of the obscurity which had charac- 
terized His life as the son of a village carpenter, and 
ordained and consecrated Him as not only the 
leader of our sinful humanity through all the after 
ages, but also as the active and, as we are taught 
and believe, the successful agent in its final re- 
demption. 

That Jesus heard and heeded this call, was no 
more than we should expect. The idea of the 
fatherhood of God and the sonship of His people, 
though never up to that time made prominent, 
was not entirely new to Jewish thought (Ex. iv., 
22, 23; Ps. ii., 7), and this idea had been appre- 
hended by Him in a practical sense quite early in 
life (Luke ii., 49). But with this call, and the 
descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him (Luke iii., 22), 
there seems to have been bom in His inmost 
consciousness the apprehension that He was now 
the Son of God in a sense never yet experienced 



Jesus of Nazareth 



by any son of Adam — and so uniquely and pre- 
eminently a Son of the Most High that He was 
thereby fitted and qualified to undertake and 
accomplish the work which, though it had then 
been in progress for some two or three thousand 
years, yet had produced comparatively little 
result — the work of saving our lost humanity 
from the results of the fall. That He thought it 
out in this particular form, cannot of course be 
affirmed, for He says but little as to His own claims. 

Modesty is always a characteristic of genuine 
greatness; and Jesus of Nazareth was the most 
modest of our race. Accordingly, He rarely 
speaks of His past, and we are left to infer His 
original plans and purposes largely from His life 
and its results. Whether at His first call He was 
conscious of His own Messiahship, nowhere ap- 
pears, for He makes no such claim until near 
the end of His life. ''My works," He says, 
"bear witness of me" (John x., 25). Thus He 
followed the same rule that He laid down for us: 
"By their fruits ye shall known them" (Matt, 
vii., 20). 

But if He was to save the race, how should 
He acquire that supreme, or at least dominant, 
control over men which would enable Him to do it? 
It was the most natural thing in the world that 
before answering this question, even to Himself, 
He should take a little time in seclusion, away from 
the haunts of men, to consider it (Mark i., 13). 
It took Paul three years (Gal. i., 17, 18) and Moses 



Jesus of Nazareth 



forty years (Acts vii., 30) to solve a somewhat 
similar problem. Should He do it by proclaiming 
Himself the son of David, by gathering an army, 
by war and conquest, by restoring the glories of 
the old Davidic kingdom, by dazzling the nations 
with the wealth and magnificence of the court of 
Solomon (Luke iv., 5-8)? 

Such a course would have been in strict accord 
with Old Testament prophecy as then generally 
understood in the higher circles of Judaism, and 
probably He had been so taught in His youth. 
The scheme looked plausible and seductive on its 
face. It would appeal strongly to the political 
pride and religious fanaticism of the entire Jewish 
people, and it seemed to have the divine promises 
back of it. But it was promptly rejected. The 
race will never be saved by the gospel of force or 
the gospel of wealth — a fact which it would be well 
for the present generation to learn, and learn 
thoroughly. 

Or, should He astound, dazzle, and overawe 
the concourse of worshippers in the holy temple 
by suddenly and unexpectedly soaring down to 
them as if from heaven, and as if borne upon the 
wings of a host of invisible angels, and thus 
demand recognition and acceptance as a messen- 
ger direct from the presence of the great Jehovah 
their king (Luke iv., 9, 10)? The scriptures 
which He and the people alike believed, furnished 
ample authority for such a course. But a specta- 
cular display was then, and still is, a poor basis for 



Jesus of Nazareth 



a permanent moral or religious reformation. This 
plan also was rejected. 

But if He must pursue a course wherein every 
means of violence, either offensive or defensive, 
was denied Him; a course in which the use of 
personal wealth and luxury as moral and reforma- 
tory agents was prohibited ; a career that should be 
marked by an utter absence of those spectacular 
shows which produce a feeling of awe and lead 
captive the imagination; might He not still use 
His miraculous power at least to supply His 
necessary wants, and to strengthen and recuperate 
His exhausted energies, while laboring assiduously 
in the self-denying work that lay before Him (Luke 
iv., 2-4)? 

But in that case, we ''miserable sinners" would 
have said: ''Oh, yes, it is easy enough for Him to 
be good; give us the power to work miracles to 
satisfy our wants and relieve our sufferings, and 
we too, will be good." The race is not to be 
redeemed in that way. The author of Hebrews 
ii., 10, understood the point perfectly. 

But — and it must be admitted with deep regret 
— the Holy CathoHc Church has yielded to the 
temptations which its great Leader thus resisted 
and overcame. The Christian nations of the 
present day deem it no dishonor, but rather the 
reverse, to extend a Christian civilization by the 
barbarities of war, and also, by the same means, 
to open up new avenues for the spread of the 
gospel of the Prince of Peace. Gorgeous cathe- 



Jesus of Nazareth 



drals and ornate rituals are employed to overawe 
the imagination and dazzle the senses. The best 
of our laymen practise, and many of them publicly 
advocate, the gospel of wealth and luxury. We 
all would work miracles if we could, to relieve oiu' 
lazy bodies from the necessity of healthy labor. 
And, what is perhaps worse yet (Luke xxiii., 31), 
the highest and holiest of our clergy are eager in 
their violation of one of the clearest of otir Saviour's 
commands (Matt, xxiii., 7, 8), so that they may 
be called Doctors (D.D.) of a Divinity which few of 
them understand, and Doctors (LL.D.) of Laws 
which fewer yet know anything about (Luke 
xviii., 8). 

The earthly life of our Saviour, as I understand 
it, involved three great crises : first, the temptation ; 
second, the crucifixion ; and third, the resurrection. 
But for the first and its results. His work would 
have been directed in wrong channels, and would 
have resulted in practical failiire; but for the 
second, it would not have been completed; and 
but for the third. His claim to be divine could not 
have been vindicated. No man could assuredly 
save the race until it was demonstrated that he 
possessed or carried with him a power superior to 
that of agencies working for its destruction. When 
this was done, as it was done by His resiu*rection, 
in that it was a triumph over death, then and 
thereby the salvation of humanity, though its 
completion might be distant, was at last made 
certain. 



Jesus of Nazareth 



By the results of the temptation, the road was 
marked out along which He was to travel in doing 
His appointed work. It was to Him a lonesome 
road, for the homes thereon that made Him 
genuinely welcome were few and far apart. One 
was at Capernaum in Galilee (Matt, viii., 14); 
another was at Bethany, a few miles from Jerusa- 
lem (John xii., i). If there were any others, the 
record does not mention them (Luke ix., 58). 
The open and avowed friends He usually met with 
on that road were not of the kind that you or I 
would readily select or highly prize. They were, 
for the most part, the social outcasts of Judaism, 
like publicans and harlots ; the impure and miser- 
able victims of vice and disease, such as lepers and 
maniacs; men in the agonies of epilepsy, or in the 
helplessness of locomotor ataxia; men that were 
blind and men that were deformed. Write a list 
of human diseases — the diseases of vice as well as 
those of misfortune — catalogue their victims as 
found in Palestine a.d. 30-33, and you will include 
nearly all those on whose friendship He could 
count during His pubHc ministry. Only two men 
of rank in the entire nation ever conceived 
for Him even a friendly regard, Nicodemus the 
rabbi, and Joseph of Arimathasa, a wealthy 
member of the Sanhedrin (John xix., 38, 39). 
But their friendship was secret, and practically 
did Him no good. He would have been as well 
off without it. 

With these two exceptions, He had to face the 



10 Jesus of Nazareth 

active hostility of the entire Jewish hierarchy — a 
hostility which was deep-seated, implacable, and 
deadly. While Pharisee and Sadducee cordially 
hated each other, they united with equal cordiality 
in a vindictive hatred of Him. Every agency 
that the leaders of the church and the leaders of 
society could devise was put into operation to 
undermine His authority with the common people 
and destroy His influence. They maligned Him, 
and His Mother also, by the implied charge that 
He was a bastard (John viii., 41). They caused 
the report to go out that He was an emissary of 
Beelzebub, the supposed ''prince of the devils" 
and author of demoniacal possession, and there- 
fore to be shunned as our New England ancestors 
shunned a witch (Matt, xii., 24). When, to save 
sinners who were in dire need of salvation, He 
sought to win them to Himself, the leaders of 
religious thought stood aloof and pointed the 
finger of scorn — called Him a glutton in appetite, 
a toper in drink, and willingly intimate with those 
with whom no reputable Jew would allow himself 
to associate (Matt, xi., 19). Under treacherous 
professions of high regard, they submitted the 
much-disputed question: Could they, consistently 
with their religious duty, willingly pay taxes to 
a heathen government (Matt, xxii., 17)? If He 
said ''Yes," He would, in popular apprehension, 
be disloyal to Judaism and a traitor to the true 
interests of the nation; if He said "No, " He would 
be guilty of treason to the emperor. With like 



Jesus of Nazareth 1 1 

malignant skill and equal hypocrisy, they asked 
Him: Should the Mosaic law of death by ston- 
ing (which had long before passed into disuse) 
be now enforced against this woman, taken in 
the act (John viii., 3-5)? If He said ''Yes," 
public opinion, long accustomed to look with 
complacency on such dereHctions, would call Him 
cruel; if He said ''No," He would be contro- 
verting a law of Moses — a crime only slightly 
less heinous in their estimation than that of 
blasphemy. 

So virulent was this hostility, that early in His 
ministry He was driven out of Judaea, and there- 
after His visits to Jerusalem were few and short. 
Even in Jerusalem He was safe from violence 
only because, as He retained the confidence of the 
common people. His persecutors feared that His 
arrest would lead to a riot (Matt, xxvi., 5; Luke 
xxii., 2); and with a garrison of Roman soldiers 
close at hand, riots were dangerous. Retiring 
to Galilee, He gathered about Him a little group 
of disciples (learners), and for some time carried 
on His work with marvelous success (Matt, iv., 
23-25). The news reached Jerusalem, and His 
enemies were again on His trail (Mark iii., 22; 
vii., i). Leaving then the immediate locality 
where the influences of orthodox Judaism were 
dominant, He thereafter spent the greater portion 
of His life in the border-lands of heathenism — in 
Gaulanitis, to the eastward of the Sea of Galilee 
(Mark v., i ; viii., 10) ; in the borders of Tyre and 



12 Jesus of Nazareth 

Sidon (Mark vii., 24) and C^esarea Philippi 
(Mark viii., 2"]) away to the north; and in Peraea, 
east of the Jordan (John x., 40) ; but making a tour 
now and then among the villages of Galilee (Matt. 
ix., 35; Mark ix., 30; Lukeix., 6), and also attend- 
ing the passover feasts at Jerusalem, as the Mosaic 
law required. But whenever He appeared in 
Jerusalem the old persecution was renewed. It 
was finally determined that He must be put to 
death (John vii., i), for in no other way could 
they silence Him or stop the progress of His work. 
No secrecy was preserved as to their plans (verse 
25). Officers were sent to arrest Him while He 
taught in the temple (verse 45), but they were 
completely overawed by the sublimity with which 
He spoke (verse 46). The treachery of Judas 
finally enabled them to accomplish their purpose, 
and within a few hours the Roman soldiers were 
nailing Him to the cross. 

Whether Jesus, at the end of the temptation, 
when He saw marked out for Him (or when He 
marked out for Himself) the road He must travel 
in order to save our fallen race — whether He 
then saw the accursed cross at the farther end of 
the road, is not stated. But for John iii., 14, 15, 
I should infer that He did not — that is, unless 
Omniscience aided His human vision. According 
to the first three Gospels, the first clear intimation 
He gives that He foresaw His tragic fate was made 
at or near C^sarea Philippi (Matt, xvi., 21), after 
He had been driven out of Galilee, and not far 



Jesus of Nazareth 13 

from the middle of His pubHc ministry. So 
startling was the revelation to His disciples that all 
three of the synoptists put it down (Matt, xvi., 21 ; 
Mark viii., 31; Luke ix., 22). Certainly then, if 
not earlier, He knew His journey's end, for the 
logic of events pointed to His death as the only 
possible outcome. To his vision it was clear as 
the noonday, and He so predicted. But the 
grandeur and sublimity of His character, and, I 
might add. His divinity as well, are ampl}^ attested 
by the fact that neither then nor thereafter did He 
hesitate a step in His appointed journey, or seek 
a less dangerous pathway. At the end of the 
temptation. He put his hand to the plow, and 
thereafter He never looked back (Luke ix., 62). 
Herein rests our assurance of ultimate salvation. 
Once only, near the end of the journey, when the 
awful cup was pressed upon Him, and in the 
immediate realization of the terrible sufferings it 
involved, He expressed the wish that it might be 
otherwise (Matt, xxvi., 39); but it was only a 
transitory wish wrung from Him in the hour of 
His deep agony, and has no significance except as 
it enables us faintly to measure the weight of the 
load of grief He then had to carry — and He carried 
it to the final end. 

"Surely He hath borne our griefs, 
And carried our sorrows; 
He was woimded for our transgressions, 
He was bruised for our iniquities : 



14 Jesus of Nazareth 

The chastisement of otir peace was upon Him ; 
And with His stripes we are healed. 
And Jehovah hath laid on Him the iniquity of us 
all." 



JESUS OF NAZARETH 
II 

"Whence hath this man this wisdom?" — Matt, xiii., 54. 

The Messianic hope or expectation, at the be- 
ginning of the Christian era, existed in various 
forms. More commonly it was expected that the 
Messiah would be bom, not of an obscure and 
distant offshoot of the Davidic line, but of some 
branch of recognized pedigree, good rank, and 
high standing; that he wotdd reoccupy the throne 
of David, making Jerusalem his capital ; that as a 
temporal king he would recruit and remuster the 
armies of Israel, expel the hated Romans, and by 
miHtary conquest subjugate the Gentiles even 
unto the ends of the earth ; that as a spiritual king 
he would convert to the true and eternal religion 
of Jehovah such of them as would yield to the 
power of His word; and that all others He would 
destroy by "the sword of his mouth. " 

This form of the Messianic expectation is 
embodied in the song of the annunciation (Luke 
i-» 32, 33), as well as in the song of Zacharias 
(verses 67-75). It was also the basis of one of the 
temptations presented to Jesus before He entered 

15 



1 6 Jesus of Nazareth 

on His public ministry (Matt, iv., 8, 9). So 
dominant was it in Jewish thought that the popu- 
lace were once on the point of putting it into 
execution (John vi., 15). Nearly a century later 
the same idea so permeated the mind of the writer 
of the Apocalypse that in one of his visions he 
delineated the Son of man as a mounted and 
crowned warrior-king leading the armies of heaven, 
invested with a rod of iron wherewith to rule the 
nations and with the sword of his mouth for 
vengeance (Rev. xix., 11-16). 

Another form or embodiment of the Messianic 
expectation was based on the promise of Mai. iv., 
5, 6, which, being literally construed, was thought 
to predict the personal reappearance of the prophet 
Elijah. This idea figures prominently in the 
Gospels, as in John i., 21; Luke ix., 8, 19; Matt, 
xvii., II. And under a third form, as noted in 
some of the same passages, it was expected that 
some person, usually designated as ''a prophet," 
but whose name was not certainly known, would 
appear to make good the ancient prediction of 
Deut. xviii., 15. 

But Jesus, diuing His pubHc ministry, never 
made any effort to conform to any of these expec- 
tations. As has been frequently remarked, He 
was an enigma to His own generation. He did 
not, at least until late in His ministry, announce 
Himself as being anybody in particular — just the 
"Son of man" which phrase, whatever it may 
mean now, was at that time merely an impressive 



Jesus of Nazareth 17 

individual designation as in Ezek. ii., i, 3; iii., i, 3, 
4, etc. Instead of declaring Himself to be this or 
that (as humbugs do) He simply talked and did, 
resting His claims solely on His works. Conse- 
quently everybody was nonplussed as to what to 
make of Him. But one thing was clear; He pos- 
sessed a surprising wealth of knowledge, and in the 
use of that knowledge He taught as one who held 
authority from Heaven to proclaim the verities 
of life and immortality, and not as the scribes 
taught, by retailing the barren puerilities 
of Talmudic casuistry (Matt, vii., 29). As He 
was a man without education (John vii., 15), 
that is, had not attended any of the rabbinic 
schools, or as we should say to-day, was not a 
graduate of any college or theological seminary, 
the common people or peasantry who listened 
to the wonderful and exhaustless outflow of His 
intellectual and spiritual wealth, very naturally 
asked where it all came from, where He, ''the 
carpenter's son," of the obscure village of Nazareth, 
could have learned it all. 

One of the most prominent of His characteris- 
tics — and one of the most charming as well — was 
His love of Nature in all her varied moods. He 
was a close observer, and the abundance of His 
observation gave Him a marvelous wealth of 
illustration. When he told how "the rain de- 
scended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, " 
and on the hillsides of Galilee washed away the 
house of one peasant and left another standing 



1 8 Jesus of Nazareth 

(Matt, vii., 24-27), He only described what He 
had seen. To enforce a moral, He reminded His 
hearers that men do not "gather grapes of thorns 
nor figs of thistles" (Matt, vii., 16). While giv- 
ing an outdoor talk. He taught them the loving 
care of the Father by pointing to the birds flying 
about overhead: "they sow not, neither do they 
reap, nor gather into bams; and your heavenly 
Father feedeth them" (Matt, vi., 26). 

Again, "the lilies of the field, " probably growing 
near where He stood, illustrated another lesson, 
of profit to them and equally so to us (verse 28). 
He had watched, too, the sower who "went forth 
to sow" (Matt, xiii., 3-8), and had noted how the 
birds picked up some of the seeds scattered "by 
the wayside"; how the semi tropical sun scorched 
and withered some of the growing shoots of grain 
on a thin surface-soil; how the thorns choked the 
growth of others; and how such seeds as fell on 
fertile soil grew and ripened into an abundant 
harvest. The foxes in their burrows and the birds 
in their nests illustrated by contrast His own 
homelessness (Matt, viii., 20). The wolf, in His 
thought, typified "man's inhumanity to man," 
and among such. His followers should be "wise as 
serpents, and harmless as doves" (Matt, x., 16). 
A gift to one of them, of "a cup of cold water," 
would receive its reward (verse 42). 

He drew lessons of profit from the swaying in 
the wind of the tall rushes that grew in the marshes 
down by the Jordan (Matt, xi., 7) ; from the single 



Jesus of Nazareth 19 

sheep that constituted the little wealth of a 
peasant, and which fell into a pit (Matt, xii., 11); 
and from the single sheep that strayed away from 
the flock and was lost (Matt, xviii., 12). He had 
known of some vindictive enemy who had mali- 
ciously spoiled the growing crop of a thrifty 
neighbor (Matt, xiii., 25), and the outcome il- 
lustrated the leading events of the final judgment. 
The sky of to-day told what the weather of to- 
morrow would be (Matt, xvi., 2, 3); and the 
budding of the fig-tree betokened that the summer 
was near (Mark xiii., 28). The evening breeze, 
unknown as to ''whence it cometh, and whither it 
goeth, " was utilized to teach to Nicodemus the 
lesson of the new birth (John iii., 8); and Jacob's 
well gave Him a text for a lesson on immortality 
in His talk with the woman of Samaria (John iv., 
13, 14). A field of ripened grain suggested a har- 
vest "unto life eternal" (verses 35, 36) — a harvest 
in which "the reapers are the angels" (Matt, xiii., 

39). 

In the realm of nature He knew all that there 
was to be known; and He was equally familiar 
with the usages and laws of business and govern- 
ment. The owner of real estate was the lawful 
owner of lost or concealed plunder found therein 
(verse 44). He knew the pearl-trade as well as 
the pearl-traders themselves (verses 45, 46); 
and He understood the fisherman's occupation as 
if it were His own (verses 47, 48), and a shepherd's 
life equally well (John x., 1-14). The parable 



20 Jesus of Nazareth 

of the talents (Matt, xxv., 14-30) indicates his 
familiarity with the banking business of His day. 
The employment of laborers and payment of 
wages (Matt, xx., 1-16), the renting of land and 
payment in kind, as well as the dishonest trans- 
actions sometimes incident thereto (Luke xvi., 
1-8), were all as familiar to Him as if He had been 
the wealthiest landlord in all Galilee. 

The law as to the division of estates by inheri- 
tance underlay the parable of the prodigal son 
(Luke XV., 11-32) ; while the general corruption of 
the magistrates of his day — and w^e have some of 
that kind yet — is briefly but graphically sketched 
in that parable of the unjust judge (Luke xviii., 
1-5). Without experience, or even observation, 
of the usages of royal courts or the laws of war, 
He discoursed of both with no display of ignorance 
(Matt, xxii., 1-14; Luke vii., 25; xiv., 31, 32; xix., 
11-27). He was apparently well versed in the 
political relations of the nation, and in the laws 
of taxation, both of the church and the state 
(Matt, xvii., 24-27; xxii., 17-21). He had ob- 
served the usual methods of litigation in the petty 
courts of the provinces (Matt, v., 25, 26); knew 
of the barbarous penology of His time (Matt. 
xviii., 34) ; and showed at His trial that He was as 
well informed in the rules and practice of Jewish 
criminal law as were His chief judges, Annas and 
Caiaphas of the high priesthood. 

Proofs of His perfect familiarity with the 
Jewish scriptures, with the past history of the 



Jesus of Nazareth 21 

nation, with its kings and priests and prophets, 
with its reHgion and its lack of religion as well, with 
its decayed morals, its degenerate formalism, its 
bigoted hypocrisy and almost total corruption, 
are found on nearly every page of the Gospel 
records. He not only knew it all, but He knew it 
better than anybody else, for He gave to most of 
it a meaning never thought of before, and so sim- 
ple and obvious a meaning that His statement 
on any subject went for a demonstration. He 
rarely made any effort to prove the truth of what 
He said, for it was so obviously true that no one 
could question or deny it. The best-trained and 
most skilful casuists of His day could do nothing 
with Him (Matt, xxii., 15-40); and hostile attacks 
by the learned rabbis of the temple were equally 
barren of anticipated results (Mark xi., 27-33). 
It will be noted that I am now dealing only with 
those elements or incidents of Jesus' life that 
illustrate the wealth and extent of His knowledge 
in respect to strictly mimdane affairs. For my 
present purpose, I leave out of consideration that 
part of His Hfe and career by which He brought 
salvation to our race. Regarding Him strictly 
as a man among men, His supremacy stands out 
perhaps most markedly in His intuitive knowledge 
of men. Here, with possibly a single exception. 
He never made a mistake. His quick and accurate 
discernment of human character, especially noted 
in John ii., 23-25, is one of the most striking 
features of His entire life. 



22 Jesus of Nazareth 

Even at the beginning of His ministry, when the 
Pharisaic branch of the Jewish church, through 
Nicodemus, its leading ''teacher," sought to 
inveigle the young and rising rabbi into their 
camp, He saw through the scheme in an instant, 
and dexterously held Himself aloof (John iii., 1-15). 
Though often hypocritically approached with 
words of apparently extravagant praise, as in 
Matthew xxii., 16, or, as once happened, for private 
and selfish ends, as in Luke xii., 13, never in any 
such case did He fail to ''size up" the person or to 
fathom his secret purpose. No man ever caught 
Him off guard or used Him or His influence for 
improper ends. On the other hand, no honest 
and worthy appeal was ever refused through a 
suspected doubt of the honesty of the applicant. 
No masking of hypocrisy ever withstood His 
scrutiny; nor did a modest garb ever obscure to 
His vision the genuineness of the honesty that 
lay behind. 

In intimating as above that Jesus was once 
possibly deceived in His estimate of men, I had in 
mind His selection of Judas Iscariot as one of his 
intimate and trusted friends. Whether He was 
really deceived is a question that I cannot answer. 
According to John, He was not, but knew from the 
first what kind of man Judas was (John vi., 64). 
But Jesus' own first denunciation of Judas (verse 
70) reads to me much as if He then spoke with a 
feeling of anger or else of disappointment, or 
possibly both ; as though He had found out, either 



Jesus of Nazareth 23 

then or quite recently, how seriously and sadly 
He had previously overestimated the man. No 
commentator, with whose work I am familiar, 
gives a satisfactory explanation of this discrepancy. 
Some try to do it, and, though believing that 
they succeed, actually fail; others try, and give 
it up; still others pass ^it by and say nothing 
about it. 

Jesus was also singularly happy in the framing 
and speaking of short, crisp, pithy sayings of the 
kind that we call proverbs. The Gospels are full 
of them. For example : 

*' Judge not, that ye be not judged." 
"No man can serve two masters." 
"By their fruits ye shall know them." 
"The workman is worthy of his meat." 
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." 
"If the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall 
it be salted?" 

"A city set on a hill cannot be hid. " 
"Let the dead bury their dead." 
"They that are whole have no need of a 
physician." 

"A disciple is not above his master, nor a servant 
above his lord. " 

"If the bHnd lead the blind, both shall fall into 
the ditch." 

" Many are called, but few chosen. " 
"Strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel." 
" Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles 
be gathered together." 



24 Jesus of Nazareth 

"Out of the abiindance of the heart the mouth 
speaketh. " 

"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." 

These are only a few of a multitude of like kind ; 
and I have refrained from citing any of the more 
numerous class which relate to His work of bring- 
ing "life and immortality to light." That in 
them all He fully justified the popular verdict 
(John vii., 46), cannot be gainsaid. But where 
or how did He learn or acquire it all? "Whence 
hath this man this wisdom?" 

I was brought up in the belief that His superi- 
ority, even in the matters thus enimierated, was a 
product of the divinity that dwelt in Him; and 
such, I believe, is the generally accepted view 
among His Trinitarian followers. But this view 
has no Biblical support, unless it be in the passage 
from John already quoted (vi., 64); while from 
what Luke says (ii., 52) I should infer that he was 
of the opposite opinion. As to the relationship 
of His divine nature to His human mentality and 
spirituality — that is, as to how far or in what way 
the two were united or blended and coworked — 
we have no information whatever. He tells us 
nothing about it Himself; and Paul, who knew 
more of Him than anybody else, admits that he 
knew nothing — the "mystery" was too great even 
for His comprehension (I. Tim. iii., 16). And if 
Paul did not understand it, I prefer to regard 
Jesus of Nazareth not only as the manifestation 
of the Father's glory (Heb. i., 3), but also as be- 



Jesus of Nazareth 25 

ing the very perfection of humanity, physically, 
mentally, and spiritually, and as showing to all 
the members of humanity what it was possible 
for them to become. 

Direct divine intervention in human affairs, 
either by miracles or otherwise, is not to be pre- 
sumed where it is not revealed, and where the 
facts do not require it. So far as I can see, there 
is no reason why we should feel compelled to 
assume that when Jesus was dealing with strictly 
mundane affairs He must have exercised or called 
to His aid any trait, faculty, or knowledge that 
did not belong to Him as a man. That He 
possessed transcendant genius, superior powers of 
observation, marvelous aptitude in the acquisi- 
tion of knowledge, both of men and things, and 
equally marvelous aptitude in clearness, brevity, 
force, and originality of expression, may safely 
be affirmed. That in all these respects He excelled 
every other man that ever lived, may be regarded 
as equally clear. Why, then, must we argue or 
conclude that, in respect of gifts that belong to 
humanity at large (though, of course, in a less 
degree). His divinity must have been called into 
exercise at all? Possibly it was, but what is our 
authority for making it an article of faith? We 
call Shakespeare a genius ; and notwithstanding his 
humble birth, his lack of education, and his some- 
what ignoble employment, we are astonished at 
the extent of his knowledge, and his originality 
and grace of expression. But does Shakespeare 



26 Jesus of Nazareth 

mark the utmost limit of possible human attain- 
ment? Must we say of Jesus of Nazareth that He 
excelled Shakespeare only because He was divine, 
and called on His divinity to eke out the supposed 
deficiencies of His humanity? I do not so read 
the Gospels, nor do I so understand the facts. 
If '4t behooved Him in all things to be made 
like unto His brethren" (Heb. ii., 17), I do not see 
how we can avoid the conclusion that in respect to 
the traits I have above sketched, He was like unto 
us (except in degree), and enjoyed divine aid as, 
and only as, every other son of Adam may enjoy 
the same aid. And herein, as it seems to me, lies 
the assurance of the final redemption of our race. 
A man is more helpftd than an angel ; or, at least, in 
an emergency in which I need help, I would prefer 
the aid of a brother man. Angels may be very good 
and very useful in their place, but I do not under- 
stand them. A man, I do understand; and it is 
the manhood, or, if you prefer, the humanity, of 
the "man, Jesus Christ" (Rom. v., 15) that ap- 
peals especially to me as one of the ver}^ cogent 
factors in the work that He came to do. And if 
that manhood, or humanity, is as large, as mani- 
fold, as all-embracing, and as sympathetic as the 
Gospels appear to indicate, may not His devout 
followers rest confidently in the assurance that, 
humbly and faithfully following Him day by day, 
they will, through His grace, ultimately come to 
'*be like Him" — when they "shall see Him even 
as He is"? (I. John iii., 2). 



Jesus of Nazareth 27 

So far as my reading has gone, Paul appears to 
be the original author of the above-quoted phrase, 
the ''man, Jesus Christ." To all appearances, 
he used it advisedly and with a purpose; and the 
argument of Romans v. is based on its correct- 
ness. Of course, Paul's orthodoxy in what he 
thus says cannot be called in question; but if any 
Trinitarian scholar of the last fifteen himdred years 
had said it, and if Patd had not said it, a fairly 
good-sized door would have been opened for a 
charge of heresy. Our church in its maintenance 
of the deity of Christ has failed to emphasize 
adequately His himian personality and manhood 
as efficient factors in the regeneration of the race. 
This "ought ye to have done, and not to leave the 
other undone" (Luke xi., 42). 



THE WRITINGS OF PAUL 

It is undoubtedly a fact that, take it by and 
large, the average lay member of the church gets 
comparatively little direct spiritual benefit from the 
writings of Paul, although as a matter of duty, he 
may read them now and then in a perfunctory sort 
of way. By direct benefit I mean that which 
comes or ought to come from the perusal or study 
of the writings themselves, as distinguished from 
what we hear from the pulpit or read in the 
commentaries. And by spiritual benefit I mean 
that peculiar benefit which edifies, which builds 
up a holy character, as a house is built from crude 
materials into a structure perfectly adapted for 
its purposes, and which makes men and women 
better to-day than they were yesterday, better 
this year than last year. This is what "edify" 
means — to build up into an edifice; and edifica- 
tion is the process of building up. Preaching or 
Biblical study that does not result in edification, 
the building up of character, the making of perfect 
and pure lives, fails of its chief purpose. 

And it is equally true that Paul intended to 
write for the edification of his readers. He 
undoubtedly knew what he was writing about; 

28 



The Writings of Paul 29 

and his natural ability, his training, and the spirit- 
ual power that rested in him, were amply sufficient 
to qualify him for doing what he thus intended, 
and for doing it well. In his own particular field 
he was a master w^orkman. 

Why is it, then, that Paul's writings are un- 
popular with laymen for general devotional 
reading? We go to them freel}^ for purposes of 
theological controversy; but with the exception of 
a few passages such as that on the Lord's Supper 
(I. Cor. xi., 23-28), or that on charity (I. Cor. 
xiii.), or that on the resurrection (I. Cor. xv., 
35~57)» we are likely in our devotional reading 
to give Paul the go-by and turn preferably to 
the Gospels or the Psalms. Why is this? 

In the first place, we have learned to think of 
Paul chiefly as a theologian, and this has led us to 
approach the study or perusal of his writings from 
a wrong point of view. Paul cared nothing for 
theology as theology. If he had been asked whether 
he was a Calvinist or an Arminian, he probably 
would have repHed that he did n't know ; or 
perhaps that he was both; or possibly that, in 
view of his anxiety to carry the Gospel of salvation 
to the Gentiles, he did not care even to consider 
the question: I. Corinthians iii. reads very much 
that way. When he says (Phil, ii., 12, 13), ''work 
out your own salvation with fear and trembling, ' ' 
he talks much like an Arminian; but when he 
immediately adds "for it is God who worketh in 
you both to will and to work, for His good 



30 The Writings of Paul 

pleasure," he clearly occupies Calvinistic ground. 
In order to get a clear and correct understand- 
ing of what Paul meant, we must learn to look at 
and construe his writings from his own particular 
point of view. He took facts as he found them, and 
put down or narrated the facts as he saw them. 
From the standpoint of a pioneer in the work of 
Christian missions, he looked out over the great 
fields of heathenism, which then included (except 
Palestine) the entire known world ; took knowledge 
of the seeds of vice, impurity, and corruption 
which were almost imiversally sown thereon, and 
also observed the morally rotten harvests that 
followed. He tells us of those harvests and of 
what they consisted (Gal. v., 19-21). Is it any 
wonder that in describing the world of heathenism 
as he saw it, and particularly when he contrasted 
its moral vileness with the fruits of a Christian 
life (verse 22), he should have used words and 
terms that smack strongly of what we now call 
** total depravity"? You or I in his position 
would have done the same, for truth required it. 
The heathen world as a mass was at that time 
totally depraved, and a truthful description of the 
extent and depth of its depravity exhausted the 
capacity in that direction of the language in which 
he wrote. True, certain of the more cultured lead- 
ers of Greek and Roman thought had elaborated 
and given to the world systems or codes of 
morals, some of which closely approximated that 
of Jesus of Nazareth. But they rested for their 



The Writings of Paul 31 

binding force or obligation, not, as in Christianity, 
on any law of self-denying love, but only on a 
non-obvious self-interest, or at the best on an 
asserted public good — considerations that took 
hold of only an individual here and there, and not 
of the great majority. Consequently society at 
large remained and continued to be as vile and 
corrupt as if a code of morals had been an unknown 
thing. Paul so observed it and so described it. 

Now, from Paul's description of ancient 
heathendom we have deduced the theological 
dogma of ''total depravity, " applying it to modem 
Christendom. What he declared to be true of 
Gentile life and society as they existed in his day, 
we, by our creeds, have declared to be true as 
applied to our modem life — to our next-door 
neighbor, whose "walk and conversation" are as 
unexceptionable as our own. Nor am I denying 
now the truth of our creed. It may be that this 
next-door neighbor, that our nearest and dearest 
relative, and even we ourselves are totally de- 
praved; but we do injustice to Paul when we set 
his writings to prove that fact. For Paul was not 
writing with any reference to such a condition as 
that of the very largely Christianized civilization 
of the present day, but rather was describing the 
almost universally prevalent heathenism of his 
own day. In other words, he was not stating a 
dogmatic theory, but narrating a practical fact, 
or a series of such facts, as they then existed. 

And why did he thus narrate them? Simply to 



32 The Writings of Paul 

lead His readers away from the vile usages of 
heathenism, and to persuade them to the practice 
of certain other things which were "true" and 
''honorable ' ' and ' ' just ' ' and ' ' pure ' ' and ' ' lovely ' ' 
and ''of good report" (Phil, iv., 8). To make 
men of this kind out of the poor and ignorant 
converts from the slums of heathenism (Rom. i., 
28-32) was his purpose and his only ptu'pose. The 
formulation of a system of theology nowhere 
appears in his writings to have been any part of 
his plan. 

We go equally astray in assuming that Paul 
meant to formulate and teach any doctrine of 
election and foreordination when he reminded 
these same converts that God in His kindness to 
them, and as an expression of His gracious love, 
has made them the especial recipients of His 
saving mercy — and this to the end that, being 
sanctified "in spirit and soul and body," they 
might be ready for the expected coming of the 
Son in His glory (I. Thess. v., 23). "Election," 
as Paul taught it, went no further than this. 
Generally he represented it, not as a dogma of 
theology, but as a fact of Christian experience in 
the lives of his readers (I. Thess. i., 4, 5), involving 
the assurance of their acceptance in the sight 
or presence of God. Universally he used his 
theology simply as an aid or stimulus to holy 
living. In all his writings this is his point of view. 
If any theological truth or fact could be used to 
aid him in making saints out of sinners, he so 



The Writings of Paul 33 

used it; otherwise he had no use for it. And 
having developed it so far as might be necessary 
for this purpose, he dropped it. 

Hence, in reading Paul we need to acquire first 
a new point of view, one that involves, not his 
supposed greatness as a theologian, but his 
greatness as a teacher to ignorant converts just 
bom out of heathenism — a teacher of practical 
every-day righteousness, of a religion to live by 
and die by, a religion that produces or results in 
pure lives, holy living. And this above all things 
was what they needed to know. Nor is there 
much doubt that we also need to know it. 

Probably to a greater extent than any other 
man who ever tried to express his ideas in writing, 
Paul was embarrassed and hampered by the de- 
fects and limitations of the language in which he 
wrote. While, being a Jew, he probably thought 
in Hebrew, he had to write in Greek; and the Greek 
language had no words for the expression of many 
Christian ideas. The Chinese vocabulary has no 
word for ''God, " simply because the Chinese peo- 
ple have no idea or conception of God. Scarcely 
any of the languages of barbarism have words 
for the expression of holiness, purity, sin, sanctifi- 
cation, atonement, etc., for the reason that the 
ideas which these words represent have never be- 
come a part of the thought of barbarous peoples. 
The English language, also, being originally a 
language of heathenism, is at some points equally 
deficient. For the expression of the idea of love, 



34 The Writings of Paul 

whether it be the self -gratifying love that a man 
has for his dog or his dinner, or the self-denying 
love that he entertains, or ought to entertain, for 
his fellow-man, as well as for his Maker and 
Redeemer, the English language has practically 
but a single word — the word "love." Such few 
synonyms as we have express variations in the 
intensity of the love, but not in its kind. Hence 
the impossibility which confronted our translators, 
of expressing in English what Paul tried to say in 
I. Corinthians xiii., about that particular kind 
of love which is a necessary element of Christian 
faith and a Christian Hfe. 

The consequence of the limitation referred to 
was that Paul often had to use old words with 
new meanings and trust to the context to make his 
own meaning clear, as in his use of the word 
''charity" (I. Cor. xiii., A. V.); or he sometimes 
added a clause of explanation, as in reference to 
the resurrection-body (I. Cor. xv., 44), or resorted 
to the use of an awkward and almost meaningless 
circumlocution, as "the mind of the flesh" (Rom. 
viii., 7), or "the body of this death" (Rom. vii., 24). 
Thus the unsuitableness of the language in which 
he wrote— that is, for the clear expression of 
Christian ideas — has much to do with the difficulty 
the average reader has in understanding him. 

It is an unfortunate fact, and has much to do 
with Paul's lack of popularity as a writer, that our 
English translation, if not actually bad, is at least 
exceedingly imperfect and defective; for it is 



The Writings of Paul 35 

approximately a literal translation, and such a 
translation of a book intended for general reading 
frequently fails to reproduce with clearness and 
accuracy the particular thought or shade of thought 
expressed in the original. And this is especially 
true of writings such as Paul's, wherein accuracy 
of thought and exactness and brevity of expression 
are, so far as defects of language would permit, 
imited or combined. Books of exact science are 
usually so translated, as are also books especially 
intended for the use of the student and scholar; 
but translations made for general reading by "all 
sorts and conditions of men" are, as a rule, made 
on different lines. The Bible is the only excep- 
tion in our whole range of literature that I now 
recall. A large part of the diffictdty the average 
reader has in understanding many of its passages 
arises from the fact that Hebrew thoughts and 
ideas, though embodied in English words, are still 
expressed in forms or idioms of speech peculiar to 
the Greek and Hebrew tongues — idioms, too, that 
are well understood only by trained scholars. A 
translation of Paul's writings that any devout 
reader can understand as readily as he understands 
the Gospels is a desideratum for which we must 
look to the indefinite future ; and in the meantime, 
we must stumble along with the aid of commen- 
taries as best we can. The Twentieth Century New 
Testament (Revell Co.), while it has its defects, 
is a move in the right direction. 

So far as we can now ascertain, Paul never 



36 The Writings of Paul 

imagined that he was writing for the distant future, 
for posterity, or for the instruction of the church 
through all the centuries of its coming history. 
He confidently expected the return of the Master 
at a very early date — in fact, sometime during the 
life-period of the generation then living (I. Thess. 
iv., 15, 17). The Master's authority, when He 
should come, would supersede that of His servant. 
Hence, Paul expected that his letters to the 
churches would be short-Hved, and he had no 
occasion to deal with any except then-existing 
problems and conditions. Probably no busier 
man ever lived. His letters show that they 
were written in haste. Like letters generally they 
were written discursively and without much 
regard to system. They were letters from a 
pastor to his own people — letters suggested for 
the most part by their then-existing wants, 
necessities, errors, and surroundings, or prompted 
by his interest or anxiety in their behalf. Writing 
in haste, he often omitted explanations that, if 
added, would throw light on some things now 
obscure. Also, some things obscure to us were 
perfectly intelHgible to his readers, for he had 
already given them the necessary oral explanations, 
as is indicated by his frequent use of the phrase 
"For ye know, brethren. " But, passing by what 
is obscure, enough remains for our ''instruction in 
righteousness," and more than that we do not 
need. 

Another feature of Paul's writings which the 



The Writings of Paul 37 

general reader often fails to take into account 
arises from the fact that he was a man of many and 
widely divergent moods. Sometimes he wrote in 
great sorrow of mind, or under great mental 
depression (I. Cor. ii., 3) ; sometimes with the most 
tender affection (I. Thess. ii., 7) ; sometimes in deep 
anger (Gal. iii., i), and with good cause; some- 
times he is strictly didactic, as much so as a modern 
school-teacher (Rom. xii., 9 et seq.); sometimes 
closely argumentative (Rom. iii.) ; at times violent- 
ly denunciatory (I. Cor. vi.,); sometimes he writes 
as if he were soHloquizing, or talking to himself 
(Rom. vii., 7-25); sometimes he is triumphantly 
grand (II. Tim. iv., 6-8), and grandly sublime 
(I. Cor. XV., 35-50); but always he is terribly in 
earnest. Other illustrations of all these diverse 
moods or states of mind will be met with as we 
progress; and a fairly accurate knowledge of them 
will greatly enhance the interest of the devout 
reader in what Paul has to say. 

I have just spoken of Paul as a man who was 
always terribly in earnest. No man was ever more 
so ; and his terrible earnestness was always directed 
to one point — the salvation of the Gentiles. 
Everything that he had ever learned, seen, thought, 
or done; every fact, argument, and consideration 
he could think of; every element of personal 
influence or persuasive appeal that he could use 
to reach the human mind and exercise control 
over human conduct, he utilized freely for the 
attainment of this result. He regarded the Gen- 



38 The Writings of Paul 

tiles (including everybody except the Jews) some- 
what as a diligent farmer in harvest-time regards 
his crops when a storm is impending. They must 
be saved at all hazards. In Paul's spiritual vision, 
a storm of divine wrath was impending over human- 
ity — a terrible storm, a storm of vengeance (Rom. 
i., i8; ii., 5-8). The time was short (I. Cor. vii., 
29). The storm would soon break loose. Christ 
the Lord would soon reappear — so Paul thought — 
in a few years at most (I. Thess. iv., 17). .The 
Gentiles must be gathered in out of the storm, and 
made ready for His appearing. So thinking, it is no 
wonder that Paul was always in earnest, and that 
his earnestness was something almost superhuman. 

Paul was a skilled logician (according to the 
logical method of his day), but he used his logic 
just as he did his theology — as an aid in illustrat- 
ing, applying, and enforcing his gospel of salvation. 
If logic and theology answered this purpose, well 
and good. If they failed for that purpose, he 
threw them both away. A striking illustration 
of this will be found in Romans v., 12, 13. The 
logic and the theology of this celebrated passage 
failed to establish the conclusions that Paul had 
then in mind. His argument appears to me about 
thus, and I quote his exact words as they appear 
in our Revised Version: 

"Through one man sin entered into the world: 

"And death through sin: 

"And so death passed unto all men, for that all 
sinned." 



The Writings of Paul 39 

I should imagine that he stopped a moment to 
think. Was this correct? Yes; and he resumes: 

''For until the law sin was in the world. " 

Apparently it then occurred to him that: 

''Sin is not imputed where there is no law.'' 

In view of this additional fact, Paul seems to 
have been confronted with the question : If prior to 
Moses the law did not exist, and if **sin is not 
imputed where there is no law,'' how could it be 
said that from Adam to Moses ''all sinned"? 

At this point his argument broke down. 

But he made no effort to extricate himself from 
his own logical dilemma. Apparently he cared 
nothing for the theology or the logic involved in his 
argument. They simply failed to illustrate the 
facts he had in mind and wished to make clear- 
But as these facts were true, and for his purposes 
were infinitely more important than the argument, 
he threw away or discarded the argument, seeming 
to care so little for it that he would not, or at least 
did not, take the trouble to erase it. 

"Nevertheless, " he proceeds — that is, no matter 
about the fallacy of the argument just made 
(Rom. v., 12, 13), the fact remains that: 

"Death reigned from Adam until Moses," etc. 
(verse 14). 

Nobody could dispute this as a fact. 

And with this he is enabled to emphasize the 
further fact or conclusion, which was the point he 
was chiefly after, that the "free gift" of grace and 
salvation through Jesus Christ is larger, greater. 



40 The Writings of Paul 

and more abundant than "the trespass" through 
Adam (verses 15-21). 

Herein consisted one of the chief elements of his 
gospel message of salvation. 

Paul here, as elsewhere, in presenting this 
gospel, brushes aside everything which comes his 
way. Apparently he has no time nor thought for 
anything else. Everything within the range of his 
knowledge, thought, and experience that will aid 
him in elucidating the subject of personal salvation 
through a crucified Christ effectively, persuasively, 
and convincingly, he uses freely ; everything else is 
discarded. 

Some modern theologians kindly help Paul out of 
the dilemma of verses 12, 13 by saying of Adam's 
first sin, that the entire human race then "sinned 
in him," and that therefore "all sinned" — in this 
way making involuntary sinners of all those who 
lived before the giving of the law by Moses. 
Perhaps this is a correct explanation, but Paul is 
not its author. He himself gives a better one in 
Rom. i., 20. Natural law, he says, always existed. 
When men violated that law, they became sinners. 
As they all violated it, of course they "all sinned. ** 
Paul, as I have said, sometimes wrote as if he were 
soliloquizing — talking to himself. A notable il- 
lustration of this occurs in Rom. vii., 7-25. How 
was the presence of sinful tendencies in the heart 
after conversion to be accounted for, so that the 
untrained and uneducated converts of the church 
at Rome, recently bom out of heathenism, could 



The Writings of Paul 41 

understand it? They were mentally incapable of 
understanding the doctrine of ''total depravity." 

"Original sin" would be to them a meaningless 
phrase. Satan was somebody they knew nothing 
about. 

Paul, by an imaginary line of reasoning, argued 
the question out with himself, and thus showed 
them how, by a similar mental argument of their 
own, they could reach the same conclusions for 
themselves, which he reached for himself. These 
conclusions are stated in chapter viii. I doubt 
if Paul cared much for the argument, except as it 
guided the minds of his readers to the desired 
conclusions. According to our modern teachings, 
his view of indwelling sin, instead of a personal 
Satan, as the impelling agency to sin, is theologic- 
ally unsoimd. But that apparently was a matter 
of no importance to him. The facts of practical 
religion was what he was after. These he made 
convincingly, overwhelmingly clear. 

Occasionally in Paiil's reasoning there is an 
element of almost childlike simplicity that is 
really charming. Take, for example, Rom. v., 7. 
To illustrate with impressive emphasis the 
exceptional greatness of divine love, in ''that 
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" 
(verse 8), he begins (verse 7): ''For scarcely 
for a righteous man will one die. " 

Just then it appears to have occurred to him 
that this was perhaps rather too broad a state- 
ment; that it was at least conceivable that some 



42 The Writings of Paul 

one might attain to such height of genuine good- 
ness; that out of respect, love, or veneration, 
somebody might be willing to take his place in a 
deadly peril. But instead of modifying his 
statement by erasure or amendment, as a modern 
writer would have done, he added an expression 
of doubt as to its correctness, ''peradventure for 
the good man some one would even dare to die" — 
and having thus set himself right, he proceeded in 
verse 8, with its application. 

Paul probably wrote many letters or epistles 
besides those which are still preserved. In his 
"anxiety for all the churches" (II. Cor. xi., 28), it 
could hardly have been otherwise. According to 
I. Cor. v., 9, he had already written to the 
Corinthians once before. If so, he wrote at least 
three letters to the church at Corinth. A now 
lost letter to the Laodiceans appears to be referred 
to in Colossians iv., 16, and another in Ephesians 
iii., 3. And it is a significant fact that in the 
second of the two earliest letters now extant, 
when adding a postscript in his peculiar hand- 
writing (Gal. vi., 11), he says that this is ''the 
token in every epistle" (II. Thess. iii., 17), thus 
implying that the writing of such letters was not 
uncommon with him even at that early date, 
and that in all of them he thus wrote the conclusion 
with his own hand as a means of identification, 
and also as a protection against forgery. For 
from II. Thessalonians ii., 2, it may fairly be in- 
ferred that Paul's enemies in the church were not 



The Writings of Paul 43 

above the use of forged epistles for the purpose of 
alienating and misleading his converts. 

It must be admitted, however, that Paul is not a 
graceful writer; that is, his style of composition 
lacks for the most part that easy, graceful flow 
of words and consecutive expression of related 
ideas which are found in the Gospels and in Acts ; 
or, at least, it so appears in our translation. In 
fact, as a writer his style is often (though not 
always) as erratic, abrupt, and rugged as that 
of Thomas Carlyle, who as a thinker somewhat 
resembles him. Consequently his writings, like 
those of Carlyle, are not what in our mental 
laziness we call easy reading; but his richness and 
originaHty of thought in the setting forth of the 
vital matters of life and immortaHty are such that 
the diligent and devout student will find therein 
a rich reward. Sometimes he apparently errs on 
the side of conciseness, heaping up a host of great 
ideas in a single brief sentence, as, for example, 
in Romans iii., 24, 25, in which are included justi- 
fication, divine grace, human redemption, sacri- 
ficial propitiation, saving faith, atoning blood, 
righteousness, sin, and forgiveness, besides half a 
dozen collateral ideas, and all in a paragraph 
of only forty-four words. Sometimes language 
seems to fail him, or, so to speak, to break down, 
as in II. Corinthians iv., 17, where he tells us that 
the "afflictions" of this life, though "light" (as 
regards our capacity to endure), and which last 
but "for the moment" (as compared with eternity) 



44 The Writings of Paul 

still work out for us not only a future "glory" 
but a "weight" or mass of glory, and a "weight 
of glory " which will be "eternal, " and this working 
will go on during eternity ''more and more,'' 
that is, continually increasing in its energy, and 
with a degree of increase ''exceedingly'' beyond 
anything he can describe. Language failed him to 
express adequately what was in his mind. 

One of the imexpected things in Paul's writings 
is his use of the phrase "my gospel" — not once, 
but repeatedly. 



THE GOSPEL OF PAUL 

Paul, in his letters, occasionally speaks of 
something which he calls "my gospel." Three 
times he uses this specific phrase (Rom. ii., i6; 
xvi., 25; II. Tim. ii., 8). 

In four other cases he seems to have the same 
idea in mind, for he refers to the gospel as he 
preached it (II. Cor. xi., 4; Gal. i., 6, 11 ; ii., 2). 

Three other times, as though, in thought, 
joining his colaborers with himself, he uses the 
phrase "our gospel" (II. Cor. iv., 3; I. Thess. i., 
5; II. Thess. ii., 14). 

In Galatians ii., 7, he draws a marked distinction 
between his own Gentile gospel and Peter's 
Jewish gospel. 

What did he mean by these expressions? Why 
did he use them? Evidently not in antagonism 
to "the gospel of Christ"; his frequent and rever- 
ent use of this phrase precludes any such con- 
clusion. The purpose of both was the same — the 
salvation of a sinful race ; the means was the same 
— righteousness of life through faith in Jesus of 
Nazareth as the Saviour and Redeemer of men. 
Both came from the same source; both pervaded 
the same time and the same humanity; both 

45 



46 The Gospel of Paul 

finally merge into the same eternity. So far, the 
gospel preached by Paul and that preached by 
the Twelve were at one. 

But there was a difference somewhere, and a 
difference worth talking about, or we may be sure 
that Paul would not so have spoken. And if he 
formulated and preached a gospel for the Gentiles, 
it may be important to us to know what it is ; for 
we all belong in that class. 

I. So far as existing records show, the preach- 
ing of the Twelve, at least during the period of 
Paul's missionary life, was confined mainly, if not 
entirely, to the Jews, that is, to efforts on the part 
of the Twelve to convert their fellow-citizens of 
that obstinate and bigoted race (Acts xi., 19). 
To this end, the best line of argument they could 
pursue, and in fact almost the only argimients they 
could advance with any persuasive effect, were 
based on the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was the 
fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies (Acts ii., 
16-36), in the truth of which they already believed ; 
for if He was not their predicted Messiah, then the 
Jews could have no further interest in Him. 
Their Sanhedrin, the court which, by divine 
appointment, as they were taught and believed, 
was the final arbiter in all matters of religion, had 
decided that He was an impostor. That was the 
end of the argument with the orthodox Jew, unless 
it could be shown, and shown conclusively, that 
the Sanhedrin had misjudged the case. This 
latter proposition was an essential part of the 



The Gospel of Paul 47 

argument, or of the gospel which was preached 
by the Twelve (Acts iii., 14-26). Paul made 
use of the same argimient from prophecy on the 
few occasions when he is reported as addressing 
a Jewish audience (Acts xiii., 22-41). 

But by far the larger part of Paul's labors was 
in efforts to Christianize, not the Jews, but the 
Gentiles, or, as we now express it, the heathen; for 
at that day all Gentiles came within our modem 
definition of heathen. Universally they worshiped 
false gods, or no gods at all. 

But the Messianic argument had no force with 
the Gentiles. They were totally ignorant of the 
Jewish prophecies, and cared nothing for them — 
no more than we care for the Koran of Mohammed 
or the mythical gold plates of Joseph Smith. 
Suppose the prophecies were true — what was that 
to them? These prophecies were all distinctively 
Jewish and, following their exact language, they 
were to find their anticipated consummation in 
the glory and prosperity of the Jewish people. In 
those matters the Gentiles had no interest what- 
ever. The argument from Jewish prophecy would 
have no more persuasive effect on Gentile minds 
than a strictly Mormon argument now has on ours. 

Consequently Paul, in respect of the gospel 
that he purposed to preach to the Gentiles, was 
compelled to work out or formulate an entirely 
different line of argument, the argument from 
prophecy being of no force whatever. 

2. Besides this, he had not only an entirely 



48 The Gospel of Paul 

different class of people to deal with, but a differ- 
ent class of minds, and especially a different 
system of religious thought. In the Gentile 
beliefs of that day, morality constituted no part 
of religion or of religious obligation. If a man 
rendered to his chosen deity or deities the required 
formal acts of sacrifice, observed the regular 
feast-days, repeated the prescribed formulas of 
prayer or invocation in the specified ways and 
forms, abstained from desecrations of the temples, 
etc., he might be as immoral in actual life as he 
pleased, without giving offense to his deity. 
Wrong-doing might be an offense as against a 
neighbor, or might involve a violation of the laws 
of the empire, and in either case might meet with 
proper punishment at the hands of the civil 
magistrate; or, in localities where the standard of 
morals was unusually high, it might affect one's 
standing in good society; but no element of 
religious duty or obligation would be affected by it. 
The gods of heathenism were not generally under- 
stood as caring aught for the morals of their 
worshipers; for as a rule they were immoral 
themselves. 

Now, in Judaism, good morals constituted a 
part of religion, and always had. Hence, in the 
gospel of the Twelve, as preached to a Jewish 
audience, this was not one of the truths necessary 
to be inculcated as an essential preliminary to 
conversion. It was believed already. 

But the gospel for a Gentile audience must 



The Gospel of Paul 49 

include this as an essential rule both of faith and 
practice. The Gentiles had to be taught up to the 
point of conviction (and this took a long time) 
what they did not at first believe and never had 
believed, that good morals, pure lives, and holy 
living were essential elements of religion. 

Consequently Paul, as the leader and pioneer 
in the work of converting the Gentiles, had to 
formulate and preach a gospel which was, in this 
respect at least, different from that preached by 
the Twelve to the Jews. But it must be a gospel 
that would include the Jews, for otherwise it could 
not be universal. So far as existing records show, 
Paul was the first to formulate such a gospel, that 
is, the gospel of universal religion, good for Jew 
and Gentile alike, and for "all sorts and conditions 
of men" of each class. 

3. One, and perhaps the chief, difference be- 
tween Paul's gospel, and that which was not his 
(Gal. i., 6, 7) was that the former involved and 
included a repudiation of the Mosaic law as then 
understood and taught by the Jewish church. 
An aggressive and influential section of the mother 
church of Jerusalem insisted that compliance 
with the Mosaic law, especially as regards the 
odious rite of circumcision, was an essential pre- 
requisite to membership in the Christian church; 
and a vigorous effort was made to impose the 
unendurable burdens of that law (Acts xv., 10) 
on the consciences of Paul's Gentile converts. 
This movement, if successful, would have made 



50 The Gospel of Paul 

Christianity a mere adjunct or sect of Judaism, 
and the effort to found a chiirch of the Gentiles — 
the church to which we belong — would have been a 
total failure. To defeat this movement, and to 
free the churches of his planting from a fatal 
bondage to Judaism, Paul practically repudiated 
(see Galatians; Rom. iii., 20; Col. ii., 16 et seq.) 
the whole Mosaic system, though of course not in 
its code of morals; for good morals are more 
essentially a part of Christianity than of any other 
religion that ever was known. But when Paul 
did this, he established a very important and in 
fact a vital difference between the gospel which he 
preached, and that of his Judaic opponents. 

And the difference consisted in this: that while 
their gospel was only for the Jews and such occa- 
sional proselytes from the Gentiles as could be 
picked up here and there, Paul's gospel was for all 
humanity. Paul was the first man who ever 
preached a gospel of that kind in such a way as to 
secure general acceptance. When this was done» 
and not before, the salvation of the race from the 
effects of the fall became possible. 

4. While I am not sure that such is the case, I 
am strongly inclined to think that the Epistle to 
the Hebrews contains a special adaptation of 
Paul's gospel to Jewish minds or Jewish modes of 
thinking. Clearly Patd was not its author {cf. 
Gal. i., 12, Heb. ii., 3), but it plainly was written 
by an educated Jewish convert of high spiritual 
attainments and great mental ability. Apollos 



The Gospel of Paul 51 

answers best to its reqmrements (Acts xviii.,, 
2^-28). Some critics of high rank give Barnabas 
the credit. But whoever wrote it, it was written 
solely for Jewish readers. The wants and inter- 
ests of the Gentiles did not come at all within the 
writer's field of view. With or for them he shows 
no concern whatever. The Christian system, as he 
thus presents it from a Christo- Judaic standpoint, 
differs from Paul's delineation of it chiefly (i) in 
respect of faith, and (2) in respect of Christ as a 
sacrifice. 

(i) As to the first difference, the faith in 
Christ sketched in Hebrews is the same in kind 
as that which the Jew had always been taught to 
exercise in Jehovah his king — that is, the faith of 
confident trust and reliance in the truth of promises 
made, and a faith followed by corresponding acts 
or deeds. But faith as Paul sets it forth is of a 
much higher kind in that it is perfected or fully 
attained only when Christ dwells in the hearts of 
His people and they dwell in Him, so producing 
oneness of life in and through Him, whereby they 
become sons of God. This latter conception of 
faith is scarcely found in Hebrews at all, but it 
probably constituted one of the distinctive features 
of Paul's gospel. 

(2) As to the other difference, it is clear that 
the writer of Hebrews carried forward into the 
Christian atonement, the propitiatory idea which 
lay at the basis of the old Mosaic system of sacri- 
fice — the idea that God was a Being who had to be 



52 The Gospel of Paul 

propitiated; that is, His anger must be placated 
or His favor secured; or, in other words, that He 
had to be reconciled to us; and that this was 
effected in and by the sacrifice on Calvary. But 
Paul's view is directly the reverse — that Christ's 
atoning work was to reconcile us to Him; that God 
was already reconciled and always had been; that 
men, humanity, had become aHenated by sin, 
and must be brought back to a state or condition 
of reconciliation with God, so that through faith 
and righteousness they might be remade or made 
over, and thereby become acceptable to Him, and 
fit, as it were, to come into His presence, and 
eventually grow up into sons of God. In this view 
of the atonement, Paul's gospel appears to have 
been distinctively his own. 

From these considerations it appears that the 
writer of Hebrews regarded Christianity as the 
outgrowth and perfected development of a still 
existing Judaism; whereas, according to Paul, 
Christianity superseded Judaism — abolished it 
and took its place. 

Whether these two views of Christianity are, 
for our purposes, irreconcilably at variance is a 
question for separate consideration. In my 
opinion, they are not; but if they are, then I feel 
bound to follow Paul: he wrote for the Gentiles, 
and we come in that class. The writer of Hebrews 
wrote for the Jews, who come in another class. 

It is true that after Paul's death (about a.d. 67 
or 68), and after the destruction of Jerusalem 



The Gospel of Paul 53 

(a.d. 70) — with which event the mother church was 
largely shorn of its power and influence — the gos- 
pel of Paul came to be generally accepted in and 
by the church at large. Peter a few years later 
(as indicated in his epistles to the Jews of the 
dispersion) had come to adopt most of Paul's 
ideas and some of his peculiar phrases as well. 
That he had read some of Paul's epistles, clearly 
appears from II. Pet. iii., 15, 16. That he foimd 
therein some things "hard to be understood,'* 
need be no matter of surprise. I doubt if the man 
has yet been bom who can take in, apprehend, and 
comprehend to its full extent, Paul's conception of 
Christianity. Nor does it count to the discredit 
of Peter that he sometimes found it difficult to 
fathom the depth of Paul's meaning. He pos- 
sessed neither Paul's natural abilities nor his 
education and mental training, and in respect of 
spiritual power he doubtless was Paul's inferior. 
For while it was no small honor to be allowed to 
witness, as Peter did, the theophany of the trans- 
figuration (Luke ix., 28-36), it was a far higher 
honor to be accorded, as Paul was, a view of the ce- 
lestial glories of the third heaven (II. Cor. xii., 1-4.) 
And if, as seems highly probable, the beatific honor 
thus conferred on each be a divinely indicated 
measure of the spiritual attainments of each, then 
Paul, spiritually, outranked Peter by far, and is 
without a peer among men; and his competence 
to formulate a gospel of his own for the evangeliza- 
tion of the Gentiles cannot be called in question. 



54 The Gospel of Paul 

5. When Paul, as he said in his first letter to 
the Corinthians, "determined not to know any- 
thing among" them ''save Jesus Christ, and Him 
crucified" (I. Cor. ii., 2), he apparently then 
adopted some new rule or practice in at least the 
particular order in which he would present to 
them the essential truths of the new Christian 
faith. At this time he had been engaged in his 
ministry to the Gentiles for nearly twenty years. 
Doubtless he had learned something by practical 
experience as to the best way in which to bring 
the Gospel to bear effectively on the minds and 
lives of those who, like the Gentiles of that day, 
had been trained in the debased and debasing 
religions of heathenism. It is, I think, fairly 
inferable that to the Galatian churches he had 
been preaching the gospel of faith (Gal. iii.) ; 
and to the Thessalonians the gospel of the second 
advent (I. Thess. iv., 13 et seq.). For some reason or 
reasons which we can only surmise, he appears, 
on opening his Gentile work at Corinth, to have 
relegated these elements of the new religion to a 
subordinate position, or to have left them some- 
what in the backgroimd. John the Baptist had 
preached the gospel of repentance (Matt, iii., 1,2); 
Jesus of Nazareth had done the same (Matt, iv., 
17) ; so had Peter and the Twelve after the resurrec- 
tion (Acts ii., 38) ; but all this was to Jewish hearers. 

Possibly Paul had now found by experience that 
the doctrines of repentance and faith — both in- 
volving spiritual experiences and activities — were 



The Gospel of Paul 55 

too difficult of apprehension on the part of his 
unspiritual Gentile hearers. It is not easy for us 
to understand them even yet. Only the spiritual 
man understands spiritual things (I. Cor. ii., 14, 
15), and those who all their lives had been votaries 
of Diana and Jupiter and the lesser deities of 
idolatry were anything but spiritual: they were 
strictly ''carnal" through and through, and in 
their lives were generally addicted to the practice 
of the lowest and most debasing immoralities 
(Rom. i., 24-32). Could the Gospel be presented 
to them from some other standpoint, whereby it 
would or might be made to take immediate hold 
on the minds and lives of hearers of this class? 
Apparently Paul thought so; and thereupon he 
commenced preaching to the Corinthian Gentiles 
the gospel of a Person, Jesus the Christ, and ''Him 
crucified" as the Redeemer of men. Of course, 
this gospel of a Person included a gospel of re- 
pentance and a gospel of faith, but these two were 
derivative and not primary. Both rested on a 
Person — what He was, said, and did — so that the 
personal element, in Paul's thought, became the 
fundamental truth to be primarily presented. 
This truth being well apprehended, the other 
essential elements of the new reHgion could 
be taught with reasonable hope of success 
(Heb. vi., I). 

Now, it is a fact that ideas, principles, and rules 
of action in society, church, and state, are made 
most forcibly and persuasively effective in con- 



56 The Gospel of Paul 

vincing the human mind when they are embodied 
in and illustrated by the life of some representative 
person or individual. 

For example; when we wish to teach the evils 
of inordinate ambition, we can most effectively 
and convincingly do so by illustrations from the 
life and career of Napoleon Bonaparte. That our 
children may learn to execrate a traitor, we tell 
them of Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold. 
Our highest lessons of patriotism are deduced from 
the person and life of Washington. The integrity 
of our Union is personified in Abraham Lincoln; 
Mormonism, in Brigham Young; Methodism, in 
the Wesleys; Presbyterian theology, in John 
Calvin. For a pure and perfect Christianity, 
there is and can be no higher manifestation than 
in the person and life of the Carpenter of Galilee. 
He who understands Him knows the whole of prac- 
tical religion; he who lives as He lived is a saint. 

It is much easier to teach and understand a 
perfect life than a perfect doctrine. Ordinarily 
the latter appeals only to the intellect ; the former 
reaches the heart and all the human sympathies. 
And the more nearly the person is like imto us, the 
more powerfully are we influenced by his life. 
Thus it was that "it behooved Him in all things to 
be made like unto His brethren" (Heb. ii., 17), 
so that the power of His life and personality, 
entering into the hearts and lives of the members of 
the lost humanity, might become efficacious unto 
their redemption. 



The Gospel of Paul 57 

Hence, if I correctly understand the meaning of 
I. Corinthians ii., 2, Paul's gospel was distinctively 
the gospel of a Person, Jesus the Christ, and of 
"Him crucified, " that is, as the Redeemer of men. 
These were his two and only two f imdamentals ; 
everything else in Christianity was derivative 
therefrom. 

It is no part of my present purpose to summarize 
the gospel of Paul in its entirety, for I could not do 
it if I would, but only to point out the more salient 
features wherein it differed in formal statement or 
otherwise from that of the Twelve. And here it 
may also be noted that though Paul scarcely ever 
refers in set terms to the doctrine of the new birth, 
such doctrine is in fact involved in his figiu*e of a 
death unto sin (Rom. vi., 11), and a resurrected 
life unto righteousness (verse 13). Some thirty 
or forty years later, the apostle John, by formal 
statement in the words of the Master, made this 
doctrine the basis of his Gospel (John iii., 1-12); 
but, so far as existing records go, Patd was the 
first to put it in form and force as an element in 
the work of saving men. So that in all the re- 
spects named, and perhaps in some others, his 
Gospel was new, and he had a good right to call it 
his own. Of course he got it from the Master, 
and so he tells us (Gal. i., 12) ; but, according to the 
records, he was the first fully to apprehend it in 
its length and breadth, and the first practically to 
utilize it in general evangelical work. When he 
did this, he created or formulated a universal 



58 The Gospel of Paul 

religion, a religion for humanity, a religion capable 
of saving the entire race — and he is the only son of 
Adam of whom that can be said. 

It is greatly to be regretted that Christianity has 
failed to keep itself free of Judaism as Paul intend- 
ed and taught. Certain Jewish theories of sacri- 
fice, expiation, and atonement, borrowed in part 
from the Epistle to the Hebrews, but more largely 
from the Old Testament, as well as theories of 
mediation by a priesthood, have become imbedded 
in the creeds or beliefs of many of the numerous 
branches of the Christian church. These theories 
are not taught in the writings of Paul, nor in any 
of the four Gospels. Also the law of Sabbatical 
observance, as adopted by most of the Protestant 
churches of America, is strictly Judaic, or Mosaic, 
and not PauHne. The name "Sabbath" is itself 
Mosaic (or, more probably, it came from heathen 
Babylon), and as used by us it is a misnomer. In 
the early apostolic age, what we now know as the 
Sabbath, or Sunday, was called the first day (Acts 
XX., 7), as the unorthodox Quakers still call it; 
and at the close of the century it was known as the 
Lord's day (Rev. i., 10) — a name now chiefly used 
by the Disciples of Christ, another unorthodox 
body, or so regarded. Christianity will not reach 
its perfection until we learn to think less of Moses 
and his system of legalism, and more of Paul 
and his gospel; for in matters of revealed religion 
Paul is a higher authority than Moses. 



A JAPHETIC GOSPEL 

When Paul, under divine guidance, crossed 
over from Asia Minor into Greece (Acts xvi., 6-10) 
and undertook to Christianize the sons of Japheth, 
he appears soon to have discovered that he had 
on his hands what we now call ''a new proposition." 
The learned philosophers of Athens simply laughed 
him out of that city (Acts xvii., 32). What he 
said was to them too absurd for reply or even for 
serious thought. So also to the Japhetic Gentiles 
of Corinth ; even after he had preached there for a 
year and a half (Acts xviii., 11) his preaching was 
still naught but ** foolishness, " and he so tells us 
(I. Cor. i., 23). And even to the Japhetic converts 
at Rome he had to protest that his gospel was 
nothing to be "ashamed" of (Rom. i., 16) much 
as though, imder or in view of the public derision 
to which they were subjected, they were half 
ashamed of it themselves, and thought that he 
ought to be so too. 

Nor is such a state of things at all difficult to 

account for. As respects their established beliefs, 

the Semitic races of Western Asia ordinarily cared 

nothing for the reason why ; if they were satisfied, 

.or assured by those who were in authority and 

59 



6o A Japhetic Gospel 

were supposed to know, that this or that was so, 
they usually inquired no farther. Their habitual 
modes of thinking did not take them into the 
reason of things. It was enough for them that 
God made the world; but whether He made it by 
a single creative act, or by a series of such acts 
nmning through six ordinary days, or by a slow 
process of evolution during millions of years, was 
with them a matter of no consequence. The 
account which they received described it as a six- 
days' work; they accepted the statement, adopted 
it as a settled article of beHef, and neither asked 
any questions nor entertained any doubts as to its 
literal accuracy. 

The Japhetic mind, on the other hand, if not 
differently constituted, is at least differently 
trained. As a general rule, it accepts nothing 
as certain (except provisionally, or as a "working 
theory") unless it can be demonstrated to the 
physical senses as a fact, or else can be shown by a 
plausible and credible line of reasoning to be at 
least probably true. When Paul visited Athens and 
Corinth, he came in contact with a class of men 
who thought and reasoned along those lines. 
With them, authority in matters of religion, duty, 
and obligation did not count, as it did among the 
sons of Shem. When, for example, resurrection 
of the dead was preached as one of the tenets of 
the new religion, the Japhetic thinkers of Corinth 
promptly asked; "How are the dead raised? and 
with what manner of body do they come? " (I. Cor. 



A Japhetic Gospel 6i 

XV., 35) — evidently implying that the objections 
thus raised were unanswerable, and that this 
particular teaching was not worthy of belief. 

Numerous other facts and illustrations to the 
same effect might be given, but regarding these as 
sufficient, they would seem to justify the conclusion 
that when Paul undertook to Christianize the sons 
of Japheth he presently discovered the necessity of 
formulating and elaborating, especially for them, 
a systematic statement of the Christian faith such 
as, lying along or conforming to their lines of 
thought, would demonstrate to them its credibility, 
and bring it within the bounds of their acceptance. 
Nor was it an easy work. A very long line of 
devout thinking and spiritual experience inter- 
vened between the teaching of ''Christ crucified" 
(I. Cor. ii., 2) as a starting-point and the final 
consummation in the unknown future (and in an 
unknown world as well), ''when this mortal shall 
have put on immortality " (I. Cor. xv. , 54) . Those 
two things were a great way apart. The Semites 
could easily jump the chasm that lay between; 
but not so the sons of Japheth. For them a road 
had to be built, or a highway cast up, along which 
they could travel, mentally and spiritually, before 
they generally would even begin the journey. 

Paul built the road; and as our best Biblical 
scholars are generally agreed that no other part of 
the New Testament, that is, outside of what he 
wrote, had then been written, we must conclude 
that he did so without aid from any human source. 



62 A Japhetic Gospel 

The mile-posts and guide-boards which mark the 
line of that road will be found for the most part 
in the three letters that he wrote to the Japhetic 
churches of Corinth and Rome; and I think it 
possible that we have therein a considerable 
portion of what he included in the phrase "my 
gospel" — and a gospel specially formulated for 
the incredtdous intellects of the sons of Japheth, 
the race to which we belong. 

To follow that road and learn to know it prac- 
tically and thoroughly, we need travel it only 
once, but this is the work of a lifetime, for the 
angel of death stands at the other end. But we 
may take a brief survey of it, note its stations, 
and learn something of what Paul did. 

I. The starting-point or beginning of the road 
is outlined in his first reported speech on Japhetic 
soil (Acts xvii., 22-31), where he carefully dis- 
tinguishes the God in whose name he speaks — 
"an unknown god," at least to them — from the 
multitudinous gods of their heathenish idolatries, 
and sets Him forth as the Creator and Ruler of 
the Universe, and as the Father of all the races of 
men. Nattirally his hearers would tmderstand 
that they were included; and this obviously was 
an important fact which he wished them to learn. 

On leaving Athens he went directly to Corinth, 
which at that time was probably the chief center 
of Japhetic art, science, and philosophy, for Athens 
was in its decline. Here, according to his own 
statement (I. Cor. ii., 2), he adopted as the basis 



A Japhetic Gospel 63 

and substance of his preaching the gospel of a 
Person — ''Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." As 
to this I have already expressed my understanding. 
This Jesus Christ, in Paul's apprehension of Him, 
was the eternal Son of God, the manifestation of 
God to men, and the Saviour and Redeemer of 
humanity (Rom. xvi., 25-27; I. Tim., iv., 9, 10). 

Another fact which lies at the beginning of 
Paul's gospel was the great and terrible fact of 
sin — that all men everywhere, of every race and 
through all time, had been and then were so per- 
vaded and saturated with sin, and so dominated 
by it in their thoughts and lives, that they were 
in awful need of aid, and of such powerful and 
efficient aid as should suffice to take them out of 
that state or condition, and make them over into 
something purer and better — something fit for 
the Master's use (Rom. iii., 9-20; v., 12-14). 

Death was another horrible fact; but when sin 
came to an end, death woiild be destroyed (I. Cor. 
XV., 54-57). 

2. But how does this Person, this Jesus of 
Nazareth, who is now in some distant heaven^ 
come into such personal relationship with the 
individual believer here on earth as to give him any 
efficient aid in this, his great moral emergency? 
Paul answers that it is by means of, or through 
the exercise of, faith in Him, as though this were 
a sort of connecting-link between man and his 
Redeemer (Rom. iii., 22). 

3. But this faith is not of the ordinary variety. 



64 A Japhetic Gospel 

It must, to be good for anything, possess a strength 
and quality that will dominate the life of the 
professed believer, and produce in him a result 
which Paul calls righteousness — which clearly 
includes pure, holy, and upright living (Rom. v., 
i-ii; xii., 9-21). To make men righteous is, 
in Paul's conception, the aim and end of Chris- 
tianity (Rom. i., 17) ; and he carefully distinguishes 
this righteousness from, and contrasts it with, the 
vile and debasing immoralities which then per- 
vaded Gentile society (Rom. i., 24-32), as well as 
with the strictly legal morality of Judaism (Rom. 
ii., 17-29). The righteousness which Christianity 
thus demands of its adherents, is so ineffably 
superior to all other, that it is, as it were, divine; 
it is "of God" (Rom. i., 17). 

4. This righteousness — and this is Paul's next 
step in the road to immortality — results in justifi- 
cation (Rom. iii., 28), by which I understand him 
to mean a state or condition on the part of the 
individual believer in which God is willing to deal 
with him as if he were just or righteous — not 
because he is so, but because he is honestly, faith- 
fully, and diligently trying to be so (verses 23-26). 

5. Next, this state or condition of justification 
brings each genuine believer into a relationship of 
*' peace with God" (Rom. v., i) — it is obviously a 
good thing to be at peace with Him — and also 
gives him "access" or admission to the enjoyment 
of a measure or degree of "grace" wherein he may 
thereafter and forever "stand" (verse 2), for he 



A Japhetic Gospel 65 

then, by divine adoption has become one of God's 
family and one of God's heirs (Rom. viii., 15-17). 
A road that leads to such results is certainly a 
good road to travel ; and no son of Japheth can say 
that the way marks are not clear and distinct. 

6. The three fundamental elements of spiritual 
life, as above enumerated — faith, righteousness, 
and justification — when properly cultivated and 
developed, lead unto salvation (Rom. viii., 14-17), 
a salvation which, begun here (verses 10, 11), 
shall finally, by the portal of the Resurrection 
(I. Cor. XV., 42-44), merge in another life, into a 
glorious immortality (verses 50-57) . 

This is the end of the road, so far as we now know 
it ; but it is not all that Paul has to tell us about it. 

7. All these elements of spiritual life — faith, 
righteousness, justification, adoption, salvation, 
resurrection, and immortality — have become avail- 
able to us through Jesus Christ as a gracious gift 
bestowed on us out of the amplitude and abundance 
of God's mercy and love to us ; that is, not because 
we were entitled to them, but because He was 
graciously pleased, in His infinite kindness, to 
give them to us; and such was His loving purpose 
from all eternity (Rom. viii., 31-39; Titus i., 2). 

8. All these are made efficacious in us and for us 
by His Spirit (Rom. viii., 26, 27) ; but there are 
sundry other experiences that belong to this road. 

(i) He who begins with faith must exercise 
repentance. 

(2) If he would walk in the ways of righteous- 



66 A Japhetic Gospel 

ness, he must leave his sins behind ; that is, forsake 
and abandon them, and not try to take them along 
with him. 

(3) Progress in the state or condition known as 
justification leads one on to or toward a state or 
condition of sanctification ; that is, toward a greater 
purity of thought and life, or toward hoHness. 

(4) Then he who has journeyed so far on that 
road as to attain unto "peace with God" may 
consider himself to be ''called" or "elected," and 
may dwell thereafter in that spiritual freedom 
wherewith Christ has made us free. 

9. Sum up all these elements of spiritual life 
and experience, add them together, and we have: 

(i) The gospel of a Person — faith in "Jesus 
Christ, and Him crucified" (I. Cor. ii., 2) — worked 
out and elaborated into a system of beHeving, 
living, and doing, so that even the naturally 
skeptical sons of Japheth can have no excuse for 
refusing to hear, believe, and obey. 

(2) We have also a gospel in which, as concern- 
ing the elements thus enumerated, all branches of 
the Christian church among the sons of Japheth 
are substantially agreed. The points on which we 
disagree and divide relate almost entirely (a) to 
forms of doctrinal statement; (b) to the relative 
prominence given to one doctrine as related to 
some other; or (c) to matters of church government 
and worship; none of which, under the teachings of 
Paul, are essential to salvation, or for membership 
in the church, which is Christ's body. 



A Japhetic Gospel 67 

(3) Herein we have a perfect gospel — perfect 
because it marks out and shows the way unto 
perfection. 

(4) It is a universal gospel because it not only 
contains, but states in logical order, all the essen- 
tial principles of our Christian system in their 
living relationship to practical life, so that "all 
sorts and conditions of men" may find therein 
everything they really need to know. 

I cannot say to what extent this Pauline system 
of thought, thus specially formulated for the 
Japhetic races, should be employed or relied on 
in the Christianization of such totally dissimilar 
races as, for example, the Hamitic of Africa, or the 
Dravidian of India, or the Mongolian of China, all 
of which differ from us much more than we differ 
from the sons of Shem. But from what little I 
know of these alien races, I should suppose that 
Paul's system of doctrine or teaching (for that is 
what doctrine really means) would be to them 
totally incomprehensible; that they could not 
understand it if they would; and, possibly, would 
not if they could. Nor do I see any reason why 
they should be required or expected to understand 
it. If, as clearly appears from what Paul says, 
Christianity has but one fundamental principle, 
faith in "Jesus Christ, and Him crucified," then 
I can see no reason why each race or nation, adopt- 
ing and starting with that basic principle, may not 
well be allowed to develop therefrom and formu- 
late for itself a system of its own that shall lead 



68 A Japhetic Gospel 

to the same end, righteousness in tliis Hfe and 
immortality in the next; or, better yet, why some 
man, knowing what Christianity is, and knowing 
what the race or nation is, and having gifts some- 
what akin to those which Paul possessed, should 
not do it for them. At all events, I feel safe in 
saying that no now existing form of denominational 
Christianity will become universal, nor will any 
such form save the race. If Patd had been led, 
under guidance of the Spirit, into China instead of 
being led into Greece, would he have written for 
the Chinese as he wrote for us? Possibly so; 
but I very much doubt it. 



PAUL AND THE EMPIRE 

My knowledge of Paul and my appreciation of 
his work have been matters of growth, and per- 
haps of a rather slow growth. Hence it is only 
recently that I have come to notice the somewhat 
radical differences that exist between Paul's gospel 
and that of Jesus of Nazareth, and of which I shall 
say more presently. If we took chronology for 
our guide, Paul's letters, instead of coming along 
toward the end of the New Testament record, 
would stand at the beginning, and would be ar- 
ranged in a very different order from that which 
now prevails. The two- letters to the Thessalonian 
converts would come first; then, probably, Gala- 
tians; then Corinthians first and second; then 
Romans; all probably written between a.d. 52 and 
58. About three years later, and all nearly at the 
same time, he wrote Ephesians, Colossians, Philip- 
pians, and Philemon. Titus and I. Timothy may 
be dated about a.d. 64, and II. Timothy, his 
latest extant letter, about a.d. 66. 

These letters contain the earliest Christian 
literature now extant. So far as other dates are 
at present ascertainable, all his epistles except, 
possibly, those to Titus and Timothy, antedate the 

69 



70 Paul and the Empire 

earliest of the four Gospels, and there is no clear 
indication that he ever read any of these. Accord- 
ingly, his writings show that he had but Httle 
knowledge of the former teachings and miraculous 
works of Jesus while on earth. There is nothing 
to indicate, and we have no reason to believe, that 
he ever saw Christ in the flesh, or that prior to his 
conversion he regarded Him otherwise than as an 
object of hatred and hostihty. He quotes His 
words once, and only once (Acts xx., 35), and the 
original of this quotation is lost. Once only he 
cites Him as an authority (I. Cor. ix., 14). Aside 
from these instances, and from what he may have 
learned during the fifteen days spent with Peter at 
Jerusalem (Gal. i., 18), his knowledge of the gospel 
he preached and wrote, came to him by direct 
revelation, or at least he so tells us (Gal. i., 11, 12). 
Consequently his teachings were not based on our 
present four- Gospel records, but on an independent 
and direct revelation made personally to himself. 

Why this was so, we are not advised, but doubt- 
less good reasons existed. It is possible that, as 
Paul's gospel was to be, at least primarily, a gospel 
to and for the Gentiles, it was regarded as import- 
ant that it be divested, so far as possible, of all the 
elements of Judaism as Judaism then existed. 

It is a fact worthy of note that Paul never made, 
so far as we know, any systematic or general 
statement of the substance or contents of the 
special revelation thus made by him. One would 
naturally suppose that he would not have failed 



Paul and the Empire 71 

to do this, especially as the adherents of a some- 
what divergent gospel were at one time seeking to 
impose that, to the exclusion of his own, on the 
churches he had organized (Gal. ii., 6-9) . Perhaps 
his failure in this respect arose from the confident 
expectation which he entertained at one time 
that Christ the Lord would very soon reappear 
(I. Thess. iv., 15-17), in which case the authority 
of the Lord Himself would supersede anything that 
his servants might write. Hence Paul probably 
regarded his own writings as ephemeral in charac- 
ter and destined to be short-lived. 

During His public ministry, Jesus preached 
what may fairly be called an ideal religion; that 
is, a religion perfect in its principles, and also 
perfect in the application that He made of those 
principles to the facts of daily life, and as thor- 
oughly perfect as a millennial state of existence 
can possibly require. Thus, he taught what we now 
know as a community of goods, or the duty on the 
part of the rich of sharing their wealth with the 
poor (Mark x., 17-27) ; and He taught it, not as a 
distant or millennial duty, but as a duty then 
present, and of immediate binding obligation. 
He also taught (in derogation of Moses) an ideal 
law of the marriage relation (Matt, xix., 3-9), 
which our Protestant churches (except the Episco- 
pal) have not learned to enforce or live up to even 
yet. He taught, too, a law of love which, if ap- 
plied as between master and slave, would have 
been fatal to the system of slavery that prevailed 



^2 Paul and the Empire 

everywhere throughout the Roman Empire. And 
as to the civil governments of His day, He seems 
to have regarded them generally with indifference 
(Matt, xvii., 25) or open contempt (Luke xiii., 31, 
32). 

Now, when Paul undertook the work of convert- 
ing the Gentiles, and in that work came to apply 
Christian principles to the peculiar conditions of 
Gentile life, he was confronted with a number of 
serious problems. Should he preach as Jesus had 
done, a community of goods, and should he 
undertake to put that principle in force in the 
churches which he gathered here and there among 
the Gentile provinces of the empire, such work 
would tend to unsettle the laws of property in the 
empire ; and out in the provinces Rome allowed no 
interference with her laws. If he should teach the 
Master's law of love — "thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself" — he must so teach it that existing 
domestic relations, and particularly the attitude of 
the slave toward his master, should not be dis- 
turbed, for this would certainly tend to render the 
slaves restless if not rebellious against the brutal 
tyranny under which they suffered ; and here again 
the Roman law was inexorable. 

Such teachings as Jesus gave on these and simdry 
other strictly mundane affairs might do very well 
for the Jewish people, since they were in every 
sense a peculiar people, obstinately fanatical and 
difficult to manage, so that, as to their intercom- 
munal relations, they were left to do pretty much 



Paul and the Empire 73 

as they pleased. But such teachings would not do 
in the Gentile communities that made up the 
Roman Empire. The preservation of order was 
the first duty of a provincial magistrate, and Rome 
made short work of those who sought to break up 
or interfere with existing civil or political institu- 
tions. Immediate arrest, a short trial, and a quick 
death was the rule for such. Hence Paul could 
not preach a community of goods among the 
Gentiles. No more could he release the wife from 
slavish obedience to the commands of the husband, 
no matter how brutal or unjust they might be 
(Col. iii., 1 8). Slavery, too, he was compelled to 
recognize as an institution that must at least be 
tolerated (verse 22) ; and when he made a convert 
of the nmaway slave Onesimus, he had to send him 
back to his owner, for to keep him would have 
been stealing, imder imperial law. He coidd not 
send him to a land of freedom, for there was none, 
nor turn him loose to become a criminal and an 
outlaw. Nor could Paul say anything in deroga- 
tion of the civil government or of the existing 
rulers, for this would have been treason. Any 
one of these offenses would have been fatal to the 
cause. Paul would have been put to death, and 
Hkewise every person affiliated with him, and the 
nascent church, at least among the Gentile com- 
mvmities, would have been wiped out at the very 
beginning. For the church was not yet strong 
enough either to nm counter to the laws of the 
empire or to disregard the established usages of 



74 Paul and the Empire 

the provinces ; neither did it become so irntil about 
two or three centuries later, by which time it had 
secured so firm a foothold and so commanding an 
influence that the empire was compelled to yield to 
its authority. 

I cite these facts simply to illustrate the other 
and larger fact that Paul in his work, from its 
very inception, had on hand the very large problem 
of adapting the ideal teachings of the Master to 
the then existing social, civil, and political condi- 
tions of Gentile life. He took men, life, and 
society as he found them, and did the best he 
could to make them better. He made no effort 
to attain unto or to incorporate into the Gentile 
church the high idealism of the Master in respect 
of worldly relations, but leaving them as they were, 
he sought to sanctify those relations and to make 
them an auxiliary in the larger work of saving 
souls. If he could not safely teach a commimity of 
goods, he could at least enjoin on his converts the 
duty of liberality to the poor (I. Cor. xvi., i, 2; 
Rom. XV., 26). If he could not reform the 
marriage relation, he could at least make it the 
duty of husbands to love their wives (Eph. v., 
25) — something that was exceeding rare in Gentile 
heathenism. And though he could not abolish 
slavery, he could enjoin on the slave-owner the 
obligation of dealing justly with his slaves (Col. 
iv., i); for it was true then, as was held several 
centuries later, and held much later still by the 
highest court of our own Christian nation, that 



Paul and the Empire 75 

slaves had no rights which their owners were 
bound to respect. Paul was preeminently a 
practical man, and in the practical work of found- 
ing, not an ideal, but a practical Christianity, 
he accomplished results that appear likel}^ to last 
till the millennium. 

Hence the work of translating the idealism of 
Jesus into a practicalism that would render it 
admissible into Gentile life and surroundings, 
thus securing for Christianity a permanent foot- 
hold in Gentile communities, was at once a 
delicate and a hazardous undertaking. None 
but a man of transcendent genius and ability, a 
man of profound piety, such as Paul was, could 
ever have accomplished it. But for his Roman 
citizenship, his personal safety among either Jews 
or Gentiles would have been nil. But for his 
liberal education and his mental and spiritual 
power, he could never have understood the essence 
and substance of Christianity. If he had not 
been an honest man — intellectually honest — he 
would not have yielded to the influences which 
made him a Christian. If he had been a timid 
man, he never would have pioneered the work of 
the church anywhere. If he had been at all 
lacking in courage, he would have given up the 
work when, as often happened, the difficulties 
before him became apparently insuperable (II. 
Cor. iv., 8, 9). If adulation could have turned his 
head, he would have become the supposed incar- 
nation of a heathen deity, and would have founded 



76 Paul and the Empire 

a religion of his own (Acts xiv., 12, 13). If, after 
his conversion, he had retained the bigotry of his 
Judaic education, he would never have polluted 
himself by any association with the dogs of Gentiles. 
If he had carried over into Christianity the fa- 
naticism of Judaism, he would have imposed on his 
Gentile converts the rigorous and (some of them) 
odious requirements of the Mosaic law; and in that 
case Christianity would have become only a new 
sect of Judaism embracing Pharisees, Sadducees, 
and Nazarenes (Acts xxiv., 5). If he had been 
lacking in discretion, he would have ruined his 
cause by impracticable measures that would have 
brought him into immediate and open and fatal 
conflict with the empire. He says of himself: 
"I am become all things to all men" (I. Cor. ix., 
22), and therein he discreetly conformed to the 
Master's command: ''Be ye wise as serpents and 
harmless as doves" (Matt, x., 16). 

The rare discretion that Paul displayed during 
the twenty-five or thirty years of his ministry, in 
the adjustment and maintenance of apparently 
irreconcilable relations, whereby peace was pre- 
served between the church and the empire until 
the church became too powerful to be destroyed, is 
one of his most striking characteristics, and prob- 
ably the one that goes most frequently unnoticed. 
His enemies were always lying in wait. A single 
rash speech carried to the willing ears of a procura- 
tor or a proconsul would have been liable at any 
time to prove his undoing. A single indiscreet 



Paul and the Empire 77 

move, involving a change in the civil or poHtical 
status of his converts, or the least indication that 
they occupied an attitude of hostility to any of the 
imperial laws, would have brought down on them 
at once the wrath of Rome. In fact, such was 
the final outcome. 

It appears probable that in Paul's time the 
imperial authorities counted the Christians as a 
sect of the Jews ; and the Jews, by a special con- 
cession, were exempted from the obligation of 
paying divine honors to the emperor. They were 
also protected in the free exercise of their own 
religion, for religious freedom was at that time as 
well established in the Roman Empire as it now is 
in the United States. But toward the end of the 
first century the Christians, then generally known 
to outsiders as ''Adherents of the Name," be- 
came so numerous that, no longer being associ- 
ated with Jews, the}^ were separately dealt with. 
As subjects of the deified emperor they were 
required to show their loyalty to him by at least 
burning a pinch of incense in his honor. This, 
because they regarded it as idolatry, they refused 
to do. Thereupon they became the objects of 
persecution, not because they were Christians, 
but because they were disloyal to the emperor. 
The contest that followed between the church and 
the empire lasted for about two centuries, and it 
was a war to the death. But during this time the 
church had become too strong to be destroyed 
and eventually it conquered. It was by no means 



78 Paul and the Empire 

the least of Paul's achievements that he skilfiilly 
averted that war while the church was in the 
infancy of its growth, for at that time the hostihty 
of the empire would have been fatal to it and to 
him. 

For reasons already stated, I do not understand 
that Paul imagined, regarding many things which 
he required or permitted, that he was making 
rules of practice which should be of binding obliga- 
tion on the church throughout the ages of its 
future history. He was writing and working, 
primarily at least, with direct reference to the 
then existing condition of things. For instance, 
when he forbade women to speak in the church 
(I. Cor. xiv., 34) he simply required them to 
conform to the demands of public decency and 
morality. The connection which women in those 
days had with the services of religion in heathen 
temples was not such as was promotive of good 
morals. Hence in order to preserve his churches 
from even the suspicion in public apprehension of 
immoral associations or practices, Paul was com- 
pelled to prescribe as he did. But such a state of 
things does not now exist in connection with the 
service of our holy religion; and while I do not 
advocate a woman-ministry, I know no good 
reason why this prohibition of Paul's should still 
be quoted as final authority on that point. If he 
were now living, I doubt not that he would listen 
with interest and approval, and possibly with 
profit, to such a woman as Mrs. Ballington Booth, 



Paul and the Empire 79 

even if she were speaking from a Presbyterian 
pulpit. 

Hence also, in so far as Paul omitted to enjoin on 
his converts the high idealism of the Master as 
set forth in the Gospels, I think that he probably 
did so for reasons that were but local and tem- 
porary ; and if so, it obviously became the duty of 
the church, as soon as it gained the upper hand in 
its contest with the empire, to endeavor vigorously 
to conform its rules of living and doing to the 
much higher standard which the Master had 
prescribed. Unfortimately the church did not do 
so; nor, except in a few small and uninfiuential 
sects (as the Moravian, for example) has it done so 
yet. 



THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 
I 

If this book were entitled Thirty Years of Con- 
flict, the average reader wotild easily get a more 
correct understanding and a higher appreciation 
of its contents. Its present title is clearly a 
misnomer. Peter is the only one of the original 
apostles whose ''acts" can be said to figure with 
any considerable prominence, and that only in 
somewhat less than the first half of the book. Paul, 
the leading character in the rest of the book, was 
never, so far as we know, recognized as an apostle 
by the Twelve. The next most prominent per- 
sonages in its narrative, Philip, Stephen, and 
James (Acts i., 13), never even claimed apostle- 
ship. If Luke had intended to treat of the acts 
of the apostles generally, he would have told us 
something of what the others were doing during 
the thirty years of his history. The man who first 
devised this name for this book did not under- 
stand his business. 

It is the only book in the Bible that is strictly 
historical. Chronicles, as the name implies, is a 
mere chronicle of events; Kings and Samuel are 
the same. 

80 



The Acts of the Apostles 8i 

Luke, the author of Acts, was probably a Greek 
by descent, and clearly possessed in a high degree 
what is called ''the historical faculty" — a faculty 
not uncommon among the educated men of Greece 
and Rome, but quite rare among the people of 
Hebrew blood. Josephus is the first Jewish his- 
torian of whom we have any knowledge, and he, 
by training and education, was half Roman. 

Luke also had a good education, or else he 
possessed a native genius for literary work. His 
Greek diction is superior to that of any other New 
Testament writer. Where the facts were not 
within his personal knowledge, he looked up and 
collated his authorities with care (Luke i., 3). 
Much of what he wrote in Acts he personally 
observed (Acts xvi., 16; xx., 7, 13; xxi., i; etc.). 
As a physician (Col. iv., 14), he probably had the 
usual education of his profession. His writings, 
at all events, show clearly and conclusively that he 
was well equipped for the work he undertook. 

From evidence found in Luke's Gospel, it seems 
reasonably clear that this was compiled and writ- 
ten after the destruction of Jerusalem (a.d. 70); 
and, conjecturally, I would place it at or about 
A.D. 75. The Book of Acts came later (Acts i., i), 
probably not much if at all earlier than a.d. 80, 
and, for reasons presently to be noted, not later 
than the early or middle nineties. 

It will appear as we proceed that during the 
first thirty or forty years of the preaching of the 
new religion, sa}^ down to about a.d. 65 or 70, 



82 The Acts of the Apostles 

the attitude of the empire — that is, of the civil au- 
thorities — was not unfriendly. ' The new religion 
was tolerated, and its adherents were protected, just 
as were the cults of Judaism or of Jupiter or Diana. 
What particular deity a man worshiped, or what 
religion he believed, was at that time a matter of 
indifference to the Roman authorities so long as 
he paid his taxes, obeyed the laws, and kept the 
peace. 

So far as existing records go, no general perse- 
cution by the civil authorities was inaugurated 
till near the end of the reign of the Emperor 
Domitian, say about a.d. 93-96; but it appears 
reasonably clear that at some time earlier, say 
between a.d. 75 and 90, the imperial authorities 
had drifted into a position of hostility to the new 
religion, and were showing that hostility in such 
ways as to make the prospect alarming. This 
hostility, we may readily believe, as it became more 
open and more pronounced, led to local persecu- 
tions here and there throughout the empire, until 
at last under Domitian, all restraints were re- 
moved, and the attitude of the imperial authori- 
ties then became unalterably hostile, and deadly 
in its hostility. 

We may safely say that this period marked an 

^ I leave the Neronian persecution (a.d. 64-68) out of considera- 
tion, because: (i) it was the result of the personal malevolence 
and brutality of Nero himself; (2) it ended when he died; (3) it 
did not extend to the provinces, but was limited to the city of 
Rome; and (4) it did not change the subsequent policy of the 
empire toward the Adherents of the Name. 



The Acts of the Apostles 83 

epoch in the history of the new church. There- 
after it had to fight for its right to live : either the 
church or the empire must conquer. The fight 
was made ; it lasted for the next two hundred years 
or more ; the empire was defeated and Christianity 
survived. But during the earlier years, Judaism 
was hostile, and violently so, as it had been from 
the first ; so also was heathenism. 

Now, as I read the Book of Acts, it was written 
primarily for the purpose of presenting, historically : 
(i) the conflicts between Christianity and its open 
and avowed enemies, Judaism and heathenism; 
(2) the unjust efforts made by these to effect the 
suppression of Christianity by bringing it into 
conflict with the empire, during the period of 
which the book treats, say down to about a.d. 64; 
and (3) the fact that these efforts were unavailing 
because, during this period, the church had invari- 
ably lived at peace with the empire, and with the 
church the empire had always maintained friendly 
relations. If these things were so, they would 
obviously operate as an argument in favor of the 
continuance of amicable relations between the 
church and the empire, and as an argument against 
any poHcy of persecution that might be "in the 
air" or under consideration by the emperor, his 
officers, and advisers. For if (as was the case), 
during the turmoils and conflicts of the first thirty 
years of the life of the new church, its adherents 
had so observed the laws and lived in such peace 
as to entitle them to the friendly protection of the 



84 The Acts of the Apostles 

civil authorities; and if (as was also the case) the 
only occasions when they were mixed up in riotous 
or disorderly proceedings resulted from the unjust 
assaults of Jewish and heathen fanaticism, these 
facts ought obviously to have been of no little 
weight in preventing the adoption of any opposite 
or adverse policy, and the new church should have 
continued to receive public toleration and official 
protection. 

Hence the argument of the Book of Acts is an 
argument against persecution, and it was probably 
written at a time when the chiu*ch was in danger. 
It involved a vindication of the church against 
unjust assaults, a justification of the policy it 
had pursued, and an effort to secure on the part 
of the empire the same friendly treatment which 
for thirty years it had enjoyed. 

Obviously, such a history could not be written 
without setting forth also the successes which the 
church had met with and the reasons why it had 
grown and prospered and gone to nearly all parts 
and provinces of the empire; for these successes, 
judged either by the means employed or by results 
attained, involved nothing unfriendly to the em- 
pire or at variance with its recognized interests, 
and hence gave no ground for a change in the 
imperial policy. 

Also, it was important to the same end that the 
civil authorities should be informed as to the 
origin of the church; where it came from; how it 
came into existence; the purposes and principles 



The Acts of the Apostles 85 

of its organization; who were its leaders and 
representative men. 

Let us see if the facts fit this theory, for other- 
wise the theory is worthless. 

The Origin and Organization of the Church 

These are set forth briefly but W\\h sufficient 
fullness for the writer's purpose in chapters i. and 
ii. The new religion is shown (i., 1-14) to be the 
outcome of a religious movement the history of 
which he had narrated in a previous book, but 
the consummation of which, by the resurrection 
and ascension of its founder, is here partictdarly 
set forth. The instructions he gave for the 
guidance of his followers (verse 8) are clearly 
stated, and it will be noted that they contain 
nothing of a political cast or type. So far, the 
empire had nothing to fear. The original and 
authorized organizers of the church are individu- 
ally named (verse 13), and record is made of 
the completion of the official organization by the 
election of a new member to take the place of one 
who, through a course of base treachery, had been 
driven by consequent remorse to a consequent 
suicide (verses 15-26). 

Next (chap, ii.) we are told of the marvelous 
success which, in consequence of the presence 
and power of a supernatural agency, this new 
religion met with at the very beginning of its 
career, and how this success had brought into its 



86 The Acts of the Apostles 

membership representatives from both the near 
and the distant provinces of the empire (verses 5- 
11). It was indeed wonderful; in power and 
extent the Hke had never been seen in the world 
before; but it was only what the ancient prophets 
of the Hebrew nation had predicted centuries 
earlier, as Peter proceeded to demonstrate. 

Thus far there was nothing in which the ad- 
herents of the new faith might not take a justi- 
fiable pride and rejoice with a holy fervor. To 
them it was a vindication and source of consolation. 
Nor was there anything to which the emperor or 
his officers and advisers could take exception. 
The reHgions already prevalent in the empire, 
and recognized by law, had supernatural stories 
to tell that were much less credible than anything 
thus far narrated. Neither was there anything 
inimical to imperial interests. Of course, Luke 
does not say all this, but he states the facts, and 
leaves the obvious inferences to be drawn. 

The Early Conflicts with Judaism 

Three early conflicts with Judaism are narrated ; 
all belong to Jerusalem and to the first two or three 
years of the period under consideration; but none 
of them involved any conflict with the empire or 
with any imperial interests. Let us take them in 
order. 

I. The miraculous healing of the lame beggar 
by Peter in the name of his divine Master, *'at 



The Acts of the Apostles 87 

the door of the temple which is called Beautiful" 
(Acts iii., i-io), is evidently narrated because: 
(i) it was an early and striking illustration of the 
broad and kindly beneficence that dwelt in and 
characterized the new faith — that is, it was not 
inimical (as commonly charged when Luke wrote) 
to the best interests of society and humanity; 

(2) it opened the door for a new exposition of the 
origin and nature of the new faith (verses 1 1-26) ; 

(3) even so kindly an act done, not to a fellow- 
beHever, but to a poverty-stricken and helpless 
stranger, was the groundwork of the first conflict 
in which the nascent church became involved (chap, 
iv.) ; but also because (4) — and this was quite as 
important a fact as any — the conflict was on a 
question in which the empire (or state, as we call 
it) had no interest. This miracle, wrought in the 
highest kindness and charity, marked the incep- 
tion of an implacable and deadl}^ hostility on the 
part of Judaism, and a hostility that continued to 
be implacable and deadly, and unceasingly active, 
down to the end of the period here dealt with. 
Judaism became an enemy ; but this enmity, based 
as it was, not on any principle of legality or civil 
right or equity, but on a bigoted and inhuman 
fanaticism, contained or presented no reason why 
the empire or state should also be an enemy. 

In this first conflict, the new faith won a tem- 
porary^ victory, and the victory was devoutly 
celebrated (Acts iv., 13-31). The miracle also 
worked greatly to an increase in the membership 



88 The Acts of the Apostles 

(verse 4), and likewise in the consecrated enthu- 
siasm of the members of the growing church 
(verse 32). 

What bearing had the Ananias episode (Acts 
v., l-ii) on the general subject in hand? Simply 
this: it showed that the church was honest with 
itself; in other words, that it had both the power 
and the will to enforce on its own membership a 
faithful compliance with the high rules of moral 
conduct which it professed to the world. Obvi- 
ously there was nothing here at which the imperial 
authorities need be alarmed. 

2. The wonderful success met with in the 
further preaching of the new religion (verses 12- 
16) led the Jewish Sanhedrin, the highest court of 
the nation, to take official cognizance of what 
was going on; for the Sanhedrin exercised jurisdic- 
tion over matters of faith and morals, as well as 
over such civil questions as were not reserved to 
the Roman tribunals. As the Sanhedrin looked 
at it, the stability of the orthodox faith of the 
Jewish church was being endangered by this 
religious revival which was sweeping like wildfire 
through Jerusalem. Such proceedings could not 
be tolerated. 

The record (verses 17-42) of the arrest of the 
apostles, their imprisonment, supernatural deliver- 
ance, rearrest, trial, and final acquittal need not 
be recapitulated. It is brief, simple, and clear. 
But two facts should be specially noted, for Luke 
is careful to state them with much particularity: 



The Acts of the Apostles 89 

first, that at this time the apostles in Jerusalem 
had not taken a position of antagonism in respect 
of the religious requirements of the Mosaic law. 
They carefully observed the regular usages re- 
garding temple worship (Acts iii., i). Their 
usual place of teaching was in the holy temple 
(Acts v., 20). They were Jews as much as ever. 
They affirmed that their new faith and belief 
were in strict accord with the teachings of Moses 
and the covenant with Abraham (Acts, iii., 22-26). 
Evidently they regarded this, their new faith, as a 
further development of Judaism, as something to 
be added to it, and which, being so added to it, 
would perfect it, and not as something that would 
abolish and supersede it. This latter conception 
and its practical introduction into Christianity 
belongs to Paul rather than to the original Twelve. 
The other fact is this : The first serious manifesta- 
tions of Je\\ish hostility to the new faith came 
from the Sadducaic element or faction of Judaism, 
and not from the Pharisaic (Acts iv., i; v., 17); 
for the Jewish church was at that time di\ided 
into two irreconcilable parties or sects, each vio- 
lently hating the other; and in the Sanhedrin the 
Sadducees were then in the majority. In this 
particular crisis the Pharisaic element sided with 
the apostles (Acts v., 34-40), probably not out of 
any love for them, but simply to thwart and annoy 
their common enemy. It was not long, however, 
before the Pharisees also became bitterly hostile, 
as we shall presently see. 



90 The Acts of the Apostles 

The two facts thus stated were important for 
Luke's purpose — the first, because it had to do 
with the charge of heterodox teaching that was 
brought against the apostles (Acts iv., 17, 18; v., 
28, 40), which charge they answered by proving 
the contrary, as already noted; the second, be- 
cause it had to do with the composition or makeup 
of the court that tried them. The majority of the 
court, the Sadducees, were avowedly hostile, and 
in fact were the prosecutors; so that the accused, 
after trial, were finally acquitted by the conjoint 
vote of both factions (Acts, v., 40) that is to say, 
by their avowed enemies, the Sadducees, as well 
as by their temporary allies, the Pharisees. 

Nor does the fact that before release the apostles 
were scourged, just to keep them from offending 
again (verse 40), lessen the effect of this as a 
verdict of acquittal; for we may be sure that the 
same Sanhedrin which a year or so before had, 
contrary to law, condemned Jesus to death (Matt, 
xxvi., 66) would as unhesitating^ have con- 
demned his apostles to a like fate if it had been pos- 
sible to do so. Hence the verdict of acquittal, thus 
rendered, fully justified the inference that Luke 
obviously wished his readers to draw, that the 
Christianity preached by Peter and his apostolic 
colleagues contained nothing which was at variance 
with the teachings of Moses and the prophets ; for 
the Sanhedrin, the court especially invested with 
jurisdiction of such questions, had in this case so 
decided. The accused had been guilty of no crime 



The Acts of the Apostles 91 

known to the Jewish law. Nor was it pretended 
that any law of the empire had been violated. 
Hence the new religion was entitled to tolerant 
treatment at the hands of both and should not 
have been persecuted by either. 

On the release of the apostles, their work was 
resumed with renewed zeal and activity, under 
the special manifestations of divine favor that 
attended it, till we come to the conflict that arose 
out of the vigorous preaching of Stephen, justly 
revered as the first of the long roll of Christian 
martyrs (Acts vi., 1-8). 

3. This third conflict, probably about a year 
or two later, was a direct outcome of Jewish 
bigotry and fanaticism. Stephen was rapidly 
forging to the front as a new leader of the primitive 
faith, and he had acqmred such an understanding 
of it that he was led to take the advanced ground 
afterward occupied by Paul, that Christianity, in- 
stead of being a sect of Judaism, to live and be 
developed only within the Jewish church, and to 
whose membership no one could be eligible ex- 
cept Jews' proselytes, was in reality a rehgion 
that would abolish and supersede Judaism, so 
that membership therein was open to Jews, but 
also to impure, polluted, and hated Gentile dogs, 
and, in fact, to all men without regard to race 
or nationality. As soon as this was seen to be the 
drift of Stephen's argument, and before his position 
was fully developed, the Sanhedrin was turned 
into a howling mob, and he was stoned to death 



92 The Acts of the Apostles 

without even the forms of verdict and sentence. 
The wrath thus engendered against him was 
turned in deadly persecution on the infant church 
with such malignant violence that its leading 
adherents were compelled to flee from Jerusalem 
in haste (Acts viii., 4) ; and even then the emissaries 
of Judaism, under the leadership of the zealous and 
bigoted Saul, followed rapidly on their trails in 
vain efforts to effect the total extermination of the 
new faith. 

Luke's historical purpose — and I am now dealing 
with his record from a historical standpoint — in 
narrating this third conflict (as, merging into a 
mob, it had no judicial result) was apparently to 
explain how it was that the new religion came to be 
presented to the Gentiles of the empire at large; 
for thus far no Gentile had been converted, nor, 
so far as we know, had any Gentiles ever heard of 
Christianity. Consequently, thus far no imperial 
question had been raised. And still further, not 
only was it true that, as is afterward shown, 
Christianity could and did Hve at peace mth 
the empire, wherefore there was no excuse for im- 
perial persecution, but it was also true that the 
members of the new faith had, from the first, 
sought to live at peace with Judaism, and that 
the conflicts which arose with Judaism were 
not of their seeking. The Jews in every case 
were the aggressors; their aggressions were with- 
out good or valid reason ; and the Christians were 
the innocent victims. And this was true of 



The Acts of the Apostles 93 

Herod's brutality (chap, xii.), as it was of the 
events already reviewed.' 

But the church now, for the first time, came 
into living contact with the Gentiles. The work 
spread into Samaria (Acts viii., 5-25) — for the 
Samaritans were classed as Gentiles — a high official 
of a distant Gentile court is converted (verses 
26-40); also a Roman centurion (Acts x., 1-48) 
and probably others, for these are evidently 
selected as historical illustrations of the gen- 
eral facts and conclusions to be historically 
developed. 

For strictly historical purposes (chap, ix.), 
the conversion of Paul was but an episode, though 
for religious purposes it was much more; but it 
was an episode necessary to the narration, for 
hereafter the contact of Christianity with the 
empire was almost wholly associated with Paul 
and his work, so much so that the acts and lives 
of the other apostles pass entirely out of Luke's 
field of view. If they or any of them made it any 
part of their official work to carry the Gospel to 
the Gentiles, history does not record it; and the 
traditions that are preserved relative thereto are 
of no historical value. On the records as we now 

^ Luke's reason for failing to give an account of the trial and 
conviction of the apostle James does not appear in the record. 
If conjecture be allowable we may surmise that this was a tyran- 
nical case of judicial murder; and if so, it had no significance in 
respect of the relations of Christianity to Judaism or to the 
empire — the latter being, as it seems to me, the particular subject 
of Luke's history. 



94 The Acts of the Apostles 

have them Paul is entitled to the sole credit of that 
work. 

And that work, as he developed and enlarged it, 
brought him into repeated conflicts with the syna- 
gogue authorities in Gentile cities and districts. 
Luke mentions a number of these, but chiefly for 
the purpose of showing how, in his work, Paul 
was imiformly compelled, in order to accomplish 
anything, to quit the synagogue and turn to the 
Gentiles (Acts xiii., 44-48). His Gentile work 
finally led to conflicts that brought him and his 
cause before the imperial tribunals, with results 
which may form the subject of our next lesson. 



THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 
II 

We shall find that the conflicts in which Paul 
became implicated at last brought him, on several 
occasions, into direct contact with Rome as rep- 
resented by her highest judicial officers, and on the 
last occasion before the emperor himself. Thus 
the question was fought out whether the active 
propagation of Christianity contained or involved 
an3rthing at variance with the laws and interests 
of the empire. If it did not — and such was the 
final outcome of the history now before us — then 
the conclusion was obvious that it had a right to 
the same toleration and protection in and through- 
out the empire that was already enjoyed by 
Judaism and the multitudinous cults of heathen- 
ism. Let us note these occasions in their order. 

I. According to Luke's account, the work of 
preaching the new religion had gone on actively, 
aggressively, and successfully for some twenty- 
five years, and in such a peaceable way that nothing 
had been said or done which required even the 
notice of the imperial authorities, a fact by infer- 
ence greatly to the credit of the rising church. 

95 



g6 The Acts of the Apostles 

The first conflict came at Philippi (Acts xvi., ii- 
39). A female slave of that place, popularly- 
regarded as possessing ''a spirit of divination," 
and who, by the exercise of her art, ''brought her 
masters much gain," made herself so annoying to 
Paul that he exorcised the demon that was sup- 
posed to inspire her vaticinations, and as a result 
her value as a mone\^-maker was at an end. Her 
owners, evidently for purposes of revenge, effected 
the arrest of Paul and his coadjutor Silas and 
brought them for trial before the Roman praetors. 
The exorcising of demons, however, was not an 
offense under Roman law. Paul had done nothing 
to interfere with the ownership of this slave, nor 
had he done anything to lessen her market value 
as a slave. Hence no law of the empire was vio- 
lated by what he had done. So, to get desired 
revenge, the charge was made that he was a 
disturber of the public peace (verses 20, 21). 
This was a punishable offense under Roman law, 
and one of which the praetors were bound to take 
cognizance. 

The trial, however, instead of following the re- 
quirements of Roman procedure, merged into an 
exhibition of mob violence in which the praetors 
not only unjustly but illegally and offensively took 
an active part, in such manner as to render them- 
selves liable to be called to account at the imperial 
court; for breaches of the peace, especially by 
lawless mobs, were something which Rome did not 
tolerate (Acts xix, 40). On the morrow they 



The Acts of the Apostles 97 

came to their senses, humbly acquitted the prison- 
ers, meekly discharged them, and, evidently to get 
the matter hushed up before a new outbreak of 
mob violence should bring down on them the wrath 
of the emperor, they begged Paul to take himself 
elsewhere. 

Two or three inferences were deducible from this 
account : 

(i) Paul, in exorcising a demon, did nothing 
in violation of any law of the empire. The cast- 
ing out of demons was not uncommon even in 
heathenism (Acts xix., 13-20). 

(a) The charge that he was a disturber of the 
public peace was not true. He stood his trial 
and was acquitted. 

(b) The only disturbers of the peace on this 
occasion were the mob and the Roman magistrates. 

Obviously there was nothing in all this that 
should lead the imperial authorities to take a 
position or adopt a policy inimical to the new 
church. Its chief leader and representative, Paul, 
had kept the peace and obeyed the laws. 

2. The next occasion was when, a few months 
later, at Corinth, Paul was brought before Gallio, 
the Roman proconsul, a man of good birth and 
high rank, a brother of Seneca the philosopher and 
moralist, well-educated and highly trained in 
Roman law, and a personal favorite of the emperor. 
As the sequel proved, he was a typical Roman 
judge. 

After a few weeks, Paul's work in Corinth became 



98 The Acts of the Apostles 

so offensive to the officials of the Jewish synagogue 
that they seized his person and brought him before 
the proconsul for trial; but, unfortunately for 
them, they could not charge him with any crime 
or offense known to the Roman law — only that he, 
a Jew, was persuading men to worship their (and 
his) God in a manner contrary to the methods 
prescribed by the Mosaic law (Acts xviii., 13). 
Gallio, as a Roman, cared no more for the Mosaic 
law than we care for the Book of Mormon ; and as 
for the particular way in which any citizen or 
subject of the empire worsliiped his deity, or 
what deity he worshiped, provided he did it in a 
peaceable manner, and not in disregard of any 
imperial law, Gallio cared not a button. Subject 
to these two conditions, Rome permitted to all her 
subject nations the free exercise of their respective 
religions, and subject to the same conditions. 
Religious freedom at that time was as well estab- 
lished in the Roman Empire as it is now in the 
United States. Nor were the adherents of one 
religion allowed to interfere with the free exercise 
of any other, for such interference would be, or 
would lead up to, a breach of the peace, and the 
preservation of the peace was the first duty of every 
Roman official. 

As soon as the charge was made, Gallio saw that 
it involved no question that came within the juris- 
diction of a Roman magistrate. If they had any 
charge to make ''of \\Tong" done (a ci\41 injury 
to anybody), or **of wicked villany" (a crime 



The Acts of the Apostles 99 

against the law of the empire), he would try the 
case; but, as the charge made — evidently the only 
charge that could be made — was about "words 
and names and your own [Mosaic] law," these 
were questions concerning which the empire 
cared nothing. Gallio accordingly rendered a 
prompt decision, and dismissed the case (Acts 
xviii., 14-17). 

Now why did Luke take the trouble to report 
all this with so much detail? Simply because it 
was what, in modem law practice, we call a pre- 
cedent, or an adjudicated case ; and under Roman 
practice adjudicated cases had quite as much 
weight as with us — perhaps more. Stare decisis is 
a very old rule. A proconsul, as a judicial officer, 
ranked next to the emperor, and the decisions of 
the former were regarded as a judicial expression 
of the will of the latter. Hence Luke could very 
properly and very forcibly cite this case in order 
to estabHsh the conclusion that Christianity 
contained nothing inimical to the empire; that it 
always had been so held, and therefore that Chris- 
tianity should be tolerated, Hcensed, and protected 
just as were Judaism and the numerous cults of 
heathenism. If so, the conclusion followed that 
the persecution of the church was contrary to 
the long-settled and well-established policy of the 
empire. 

3. The third occasion came some two years 
later at Ephesus, then the capital of the Roman 
province of Asia, now a part of Asia Minor. So 



100 The Acts of the Apostles 

numerous were Paul's converts from heathenism 
that the sale of the images and shrines which 
constituted a part of the cult of the heathen 
goddess Diana, became seriously lessened, and 
a trade-union riot followed (Acts xix., 23-41). 
In this case, however, though Paul was not ar- 
rested, two of his coadjutors were, but no formal 
trial appears to have been had. But apparently- 
some of the magistrates were friendly to Paul, 
had kept themselves well-informed of what was 
going on, both as to Paul's doings and as to the 
trade-union opposition, and consequently were 
prepared to deal with the riot as soon as it broke 
out. Verse 40 gives formal expression to the 
danger that confronted the magistrates when the 
public peace was disturbed. In the case here re- 
ferred to the town clerk, evidently familiar with all 
the facts, reminded the mob that these Christians 
were "neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers 
of [their] goddess" (verse 37), and consequently, 
by inference, had done nothing to interfere with 
their worship or to disturb the public peace. If 
they had done any wrong or injury to Demetrius 
or his fellow-craftsmen, an ample remedy by a 
regular course of procedure was provided by law, 
and to this they could report (verse 38). Ob- 
viously no such wrong had been done ; the makers 
of devotional shrines could still continue to make 
and sell as many of them as the worshipers of 
Diana desired to purchase. Paul and his co- 
adjutors had not interfered with the worship of 



The Acts of the Apostles lOi 

Diana nor with the business or trade of her de- 
votees. And if it was so here, it was presumptively 
so elsewhere in the empire — in fact wherever any 
idolatrous or other worship prevailed. Thus the 
leaders of the new church were adjudged to be 
keepers of the peace in their relations with heathen- 
ism, just as before Gallio they had been held to 
be keepers of the peace in their dealings with 
Judaism. In both cases they had respected and 
obeyed the laws of the empire. 

4. All these experiences, however, were only a 
prelude to the next, which began in the temple at 
Jerusalem, and ended in the court of Caesar at 
Rome, occupying in all four or five years. 

About the year a.d. 57 or 58 Paul made a trip to 
Jerusalem, ostensibly to carry and deliver certain 
moneys which his Gentile churches had raised 
for the poverty-stricken members of the mother 
church (Rom. xv., 25, 26). I doubt if this was the 
real reason for the journey, for certainly Paul was 
not justified in thus risking his life (Acts xxi., 4, 
11-14) on a business errand which any one of his 
several lieutenants could have done just as well 
and with perfect safety. But clearly it was the 
only reason of which Luke knew. How it was 
that by so doing Paul was putting himself in peril, 
has been explained already. When he released 
the churches under his charge from the obligations 
of the Mosaic law and ritual, as adopted and en- 
forced by the great Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, he 
thereby became in Je\\dsh thought a renegade and 



102 The Acts of the Apostles 

an outcast. It is safe to say that when he entered 
the city he was the most thoroughly hated man 
within its walls. But as he had been there only 
once or twice during the previous twenty years, 
and then only for a short time, he was probably 
known personally to few outside the circle of 
Christian converts, and even the majority of 
them regarded him with very marked disfavor 
(verses 20, 21). 

In order to conciHate this hostile Christian 
element, Paul consented to show in public at 
least an external conformity to one of their leading 
ceremonial observances (verses 22-26). One da}^ 
while so occupied, he chanced to come under the 
notice of some foreign Jews who knew him by 
sight, and who, in their bigoted fanaticism, at 
once raised the ''mad-dog" cry of heresy and 
temple-profanation. A wild and lawless riot 
immediately broke loose. The Roman garrison 
quickly intervened and rescued Paul from an other- 
wise certain death, not because they cared any- 
thing for Paul, or even knew him, but simply to 
''keep the peace. " Before the officer in command 
of the garrison could find out what the riot was 
about, he learned of the existence of a secret but 
well-devised plot, engineered by the holy Sanhedrin 
itself, having for its object the assassination of 
Paul. He thereupon promptly relieved himself 
of responsibility by sending Paul, under a power- 
ful military escort, to his superior officer, Felix, 
the procurator at Cassarea, and referred Paul's 



The Acts of the Apostles 103 

accusers to that superior authority (chaps, xxi.- 
xxiv.). 

A time was set for the trial, and the accusers 
appeared, accompanied by a professional advocate 
who filled the role of prosecuting attorney. A set 
of charges (an accusatio, or, as we call it, an indict- 
ment) was formulated, in substance as follows: 

(i) That Paul was a notorious disturber of the 
pubHc peace (Acts xxiv., 5). 

(2) That he was a ringleader of the new sect, 
then known in Jerusalem as ''the Nazarenes" 
(verse 5). 

(3) That he had profaned the holy temple of 
the Jews (verse 6). 

Counts I and 3 of this indictment were for 
offenses that w^ere punishable under Roman law, 
for as to count 3, the Jews in their worship were 
under the protection of the empire. Paul in his 
defense denied that he was guilty of either of these 
offenses and demanded the proofs, as he had a 
perfect right to do imder Roman law (Acts xxiv., 
11-13, 19, 20). But the proofs were not forth- 
coming. Perhaps the witnesses, ''the Jews from 
Asia" (Acts xxi., 27), had returned to their distant 
homes, or for some other reason could not be found. 
Possibly they had discovered the mistake they had 
made (verse 29). 

Under count 2 Paul admitted the fact, but 
denied that this constituted a crime under Roman 
law (Acts xxiv., 14-17), which was a true and 
complete answer to the charge. 



104 The Acts of the Apostles 

Clearly the prosecution had failed to make out a 
case and the prisoner was entitled to an immediate 
acquittal and release. And not only had the 
prosecution failed, but Felix had already ac- 
quired in some manner a sufficient knowledge of 
Christianity — then known to him as ''the way" — 
to enable him to see that the empire had nothing 
to fear from Paul's preaching (verse 22). At the 
same time he had no notion of letting Paul go. 
He would make his imprisonment as comfortable 
as possible (verse 23), and that might prevent 
any appeal to the emperor; he would detain him 
on the frivolous pretext that he must see Lysias 
before pronoimcing judgment (verse 22) ; he would 
bring Paul within the fascinating influence of his 
beautiful Jewish bride Drusilla (verse 24) ; he him- 
self would entertain him as a specially honored 
palace guest (verse 26) ; he would even try to endure 
his preaching, but a single experiment was enough 
(verse 25) — and all for what? A bribe ! (verse 26). 
Paul could have had his liberty at any time by 
paying a reasonable bribe, but it was not yet time 
for the church to be doing business in that way. 
We do it now, only we call it a ransom — the same 
thing under another name. 

Felix continued to play this game for two years 
(verse 27) ; but finally, on account of tyranny and 
brutality, he was removed from office and ordered 
to Rome for trial. Then in hopes of appeasing the 
wrath of the Jews who had been instrumental in 
securing his recall, he left Paul a prisoner in chains. 



The Acts of the Apostles 105 

The case then came before the procurator's suc- 
cessor, Festus, who in the main was a fair and ex- 
emplary ruler. What Festus should do with the 
case was to Felix apparently a matter of indiffer- 
ence. Having incurred the emperor's displeasure, 
Felix had other matters to think of. 

The Jews had become a turbulent, fanatical, 
passionate, and quarrelsome people, and were 
probably the most difficult to manage of all the 
subject nations of the empire. Festus, within 
three days after reaching his capital, Caesarea, 
probably in order to get a better knowledge of the 
singular people with which he had to deal, made a 
trip to Jerusalem (Acts xxv., i). Jewish hatred of 
Patd had not abated during the two years that had 
passed. At once the Jews made a dead set to get 
Festus to bring Paul to Jerusalem for trial, where, 
even if he should reach the place alive, which was 
very doubtful (verse 3), it was perfectly obvious 
to one knowing the condition of things in the city 
that he would be convicted on the testimony of 
perjured witnesses, or that, if acquitted, he would 
be assassinated as soon as he was out of sight of 
the imperial guards. Festus at first very curtly 
refused the demand of the Jews. Paul was in his 
custody at Caesarea, and there the trial must be 
held (verses 2-5). 

The trial was so held, and it was briefly a repeti- 
tion of the former trial before Felix (verses 6-8). 
The charges were not sustained, for if they had 
been, Festus would have pronounced judgment at 



io6 The Acts of the Apostles 

once, as he was anxious to placate the favor of the 
turbulent people he had come to rule (verse 9). 
This latter consideration moved him to suggest 
that instead of rendering judgment at once — and 
obviously a judgment of acquittal (verse 10) — 
he would retry the case at Jerusalem. Paul 
evidently knew that a trial among the perjurers and 
assassins of Jerusalem would only result fatally to 
himself. Thereupon he exercised his right as a 
Roman citizen of an appeal to the emperor. This 
appeal removed the case from Festus's jurisdiction. 
He then had nothing to do but keep the prisoner 
in safe custody till he could be sent to Rome, and 
with him to send a transcript of the charges made 
against him, and of the proofs and proceedings. 
Festus, however, had now got himself into a 
rather bad box. He could not help recognizing 
the fact that Paul was entitled to a verdict of 
acquittal, as fully appears from the last clause of 
verse 10, and from Festus 's own admissions to 
Agrippa (verses 17-19, 25); but he had refused 
to acquit him before the appeal, and under Roman 
procedure he could not acquit him after appeal. 
He must now send the prisoner to Rome; must 
send with him a transcript of the case, a trans- 
cript that should include some charge of offense 
against the laws of the empire and also an abstract 
of the evidence to sustain the charge. This he 
could not furnish for the prosecution had failed 
to make out a specific case. By sending to his 
imperial master such a case as this then appeared 



The Acts of the Apostles 107 

to be, he would only render himself a subject of 
derision at the imperial court (Acts xxv., 27). 

While Festus was still puzzling with himself 
what to do, it happened that Herod Agrippa, the 
Roman governor (under the title of king) of certain 
provinces along the northeast frontier of Palestine 
made a state call on Festus, and doubtless being 
cordiall}^ welcomed (for such a call was a high 
honor) ''tarried there many days" (verses 13, 14). 
Now, while Festus evidently knew nothing of 
Moses and the prophets, nothing of the peculiarities 
of Jewish religion, ritual, ceremonial require- 
ments, Messianic expectations, etc., and conse- 
quently could not make out whether Paul, in his 
preaching had so interfered with Jewish worship 
and observances as to render himself amenable 
to punishment under imperial laws, Agrippa, on 
the other hand, was perfectly familiar with the 
whole subject; for, in addition to his training and 
long experience as a Roman king, he had had in 
early life a Jewish education, and was, nominally 
at least, an adherent of the Jewish faith. Even 
still, by the special authorization of the emperor, 
he appointed the high priest and exercised a 
general supervision over the affairs of the tem- 
ple. Possibly he might help Festus out of his 
dilemma. Accordingly one day Festus submitted 
to him a brief statement of the case (verses 14-21). 
Agrippa readily consented, and the day following 
was set for the hearing, which, though not a 
trial in form (for no trial could be had after ap- 



io8 The Acts of the Apostles 

peal), yet in moral and logical effect amounted to 
that. 

This hearing was evidently made a state occasion 
for the entertainment of the royal visitors by a 
lavish display of all the wealth, pomp, and magni- 
ficence with which it could be invested. Festus, 
as imperial procurator, would necessarily wear his 
scarlet robe and the other gorgeous insignia of his 
high office. Agrippa, we may be sure, did not 
forget, when he came, to bring with him his crown 
and royal apparel — for the Herods were always 
noted for their love of ostentation and show. 
Bernice also was there. She too was a Herod, 
the daughter of one king, successively the wife of 
two other kings, the sister of a fourth king, and 
afterward the reputed mistress of an emperor; 
wealthy, proud, and imperious, and noted even in 
Rome for her rare beauty. It is safe to say that 
with her personal attractions, dress, and decora- 
tions and her attendant retinue, she contributed 
no small part to the magnificent pageantry. The 
uniformed officials of Festus's court were there, 
his assessors, military tribunes, and lictors. The 
city officials also were invited (verse 23). 
Evidently in Luke's thought the court, as thus 
constituted, befitted the occasion ; for it was finally 
to be determined, so far as it could be determined 
by any authority less than that of the emperor 
himself, whether Christianity, as preached by 
Paul, was permissible within the empire. In the 
trial of Paul, Christianity itself was on trial. 



The Acts of the Apostles 109 

Festus opened the proceedings with a neat, 
clear, and graceftd statement of the case as it was 
developed on the previous trial, and also of his 
dilemma in respect of sending it to the emperor. 
He then turned the case over to Agrippa, who thus 
became the presiding judge. On receiving per- 
mission to speak, Paul proceeded with a masterly- 
exposition of the relation to Judaism of the new 
faith that he preached (chap. xxvi.). 

In it he was grand, eloquent, and sublime. No 
finer defense of Christianity was ever formulated. 
Agrippa, to whom it was especially addressed, 
evidently ujiderstood it all; but Paul's recital of 
heavenly visions and revelations, of Messianic 
hopes and Mosaic prophecies, of repentance, sanc- 
tification, and the resurrection of the dead — 
to these Festus apparently listened in dismayed 
wonder and astonishment. What could it all 
mean? To him such talk was but the raving of 
a man driven into insanity by overstudy (verse 
24). Paul gracefully affirmed his own sanity 
and declared that he was speaking "words of truth 
and soberness," as Agrippa well knew, if Festus 
did not (verses 25, 26). 

Resuming his defense after Festus^s interrup- 
tion, Paul began to press home on Agrippa the 
conclusiveness of the argument from prophecy 
(verse 2']). It seems clear that Agrippa at once 
apprehended the drift of the argument, but he 
was not minded to be caught in a trap. He had 
heard enough. He closed the discussion with a 



no The Acts of the Apostles 

curt remark (verse 28), the meaning of which 
cannot be certainly determined, for we do not 
know the tone of voice or the manner in which 
it was spoken. Agrippa, though a Jew by faith, 
was cynical in temperament, and not noted for 
piety; in fact, he was "a man of the world" as 
the world went then. Derisively he said in sub- 
stance, as I read it: ''A little more and you will 
make a Christian of me. " The idea of making a 
Christian of Herod Agrippa was the climax of 
absurdity, or as we sometimes say coUoqxiially, it 
was "too funny for anything." We may readily 
imagine that, imless restrained by etiquette or 
''good form," a loud haw-haw throughout the 
court must have greeted this remark. Paul's 
reply is in strict accord with this interpretation, 
for he impliedly admits that he has no more 
expectation of converting Agrippa than he has 
of converting the lordly Festus and his heathen 
court, the wanton Bernice, and the other numer- 
ous members of the heathen concourse. The 
idea, so prominent in our modern preaching and 
hymnology, that Agrippa was "almost persuaded," 
is not sustained by the record. 

Without waiting to hear the remainder of Paul's 
argument, the court adjourned (verse 30). After 
a consultation of all the officials (court and 
cabinet), a verdict of acquittal was unanimously 
agreed on (verses 31, 32), although technically it 
came too late to effect Paul's release. But as a 
judicial finding its moral effect was the same. 



The Acts of the Apostles iii 

Paul, in preaching Christianity, had wronged no 
one ; had done no violence to Judaism nor to its 
service or worship; had violated no law of the 
empire. Probably there was just at that .time no 
officer of the imperial government better qualified 
to pass judicially on those questions than was 
Herod Agrippa, and I surmise that this was Luke's 
reason for giving such full particulars of this 
remarkable trial. 

I have followed these proceedings with some 
detail simply to bring out clearly the fact that on 
these charges, and the only charges which could 
be brought against him, Paul was tried three times 
by the imperial authorities — first by Felix, then 
by his successor Festus, and again by Agrippa^ 
and by none of the three was he found to be guilty 
of any offense against, or of any crime under, the 
laws of the empire, even though the prosecution 
was conducted by the Jewish Sanhedrin with all 
the wealth, power, and influence at its command, 
and when two at least of the three judges were 
avowedly hostile, and the third, Agrippa, no friend 
of Paul's. 

It is a noticeable fact that Luke is silent as to 
the first disposal of Paul's case, when this was 
brought before the emperor for appeal. 

From the record left us (Acts xxviii., 11-31) it 
seems that Paul, on arriving at Rome, was not 
regarded by the imperial authorities as a particu- 
larly dangerous personage, and hence, instead of 
being subjected to close confinement was made a 



112 The Acts of the Apostles 

prisoner in libera custodia, that is, guarded only by- 
soldiers to prevent his escape, and in order that 
he might be produced when called for. His 
imprisonment was largely nominal. 

He was allowed to rent lodgings or apartments of 
his own, and within those lodgings was subject to 
no restrictions in respect of his evangeHzing work. 
And this detention continued two whole years, 
probably awaiting the coming of a new transcript 
of the case from Festus, to take the place of 
the one presumably lost in the shipwreck; or pos- 
sibly the interval was spent in efforts to look 
up the witnesses, "Jews from Asia" (Acts xxi., 
27), in whose bigotry the proceedings had their 
inception. 

If we may conjecture that the witnesses were 
never found, or that the transcript, when it came, 
was found by the Roman lawyers to be fatally 
defective, and that Paul, after a nominal hearing, 
was discharged without trial, then the history 
would be perfectly consistent with all the facts 
now known to us. 

There could hardly have been a judicial trial 
and acquittal, for, if there had been, and if I am 
right in the views above expressed as to Luke's 
purpose in writing the book, he would certainly 
have told us of such an event, for such fact would 
have completed and fully confirmed his main 
argument. In fact, such an adjudication would 
have been final in all Roman courts throughout 
the empire, at least, until reversed in some later 



The Acts of the Apostles 113 

proceeding by the same or some subsequent 
emperor. 

Hence I am inclined to think that, as the out- 
come of this particular episode, Paul was finally- 
discharged without trial; evidence and record, one 
or both, being lost. But the fact that for ''two 
whole years," and while in custody as a prisoner, 
he was permitted to preach Christianity, at the 
headquarters of the empire, is strongly confirma- 
tory of the conclusion that the imperial authorities, 
at that time, did not regard the new religion as 
containing anything inimical to imperial interests ; 
and this fact Luke apparently recorded with care, 
for it was at least partial confirmation of the con- 
clusion which he was seeking to establish. 

The inference is obvious; the empire had no 
cause or occasion to take an attitude or adopt 
a policy hostile to Christianity, and least of all to 
persecute its adherents. If precedents or adjudi- 
cated cases were worth anything, the results of 
these three trials could be properly cited along 
with those that had gone before to support that 
conclusion. 

5. Paul's next trial was before the emperor at 
Rome. Of the details and results of that trial we 
know nothing with certainty, but other facts 
known to us are compatible only with his acquittal . 
Luke tells us only (Acts xxviii., 30) that Paul re- 
mained two years a prisoner in Rome. Probably 
the transcript of the case was lost in the shipwreck 
(chap, xxvii.,), and the proceedings were delayed 



1 14 The Acts of the Apostles 

till a new one could be procured from Caesarea. 
For reasons, a statement of which would unduly 
lengthen the present sketch, I think it fairly clear 
that Luke intended to write a third book — his 
Gospel being, as he calls it, "the first" (Acts i., i) 
— ^which should be practically a continuation of 
Acts (the second book), and should further de- 
velop the same general subject. Perhaps death 
intervened to prevent it; perhaps he wrote it, and 
it is lost. In any event, the Book of Acts is a clear, 
and historically a noble, vindication of the rights of 
Christianity within the empire, and of the right of 
its adherents to live in the empire as a part of the 
empire, and to be protected by the empire. They 
kept the peace and obeyed the laws; so it had been 
judicially decided by the imperial courts time and 
time again; what more had the empire a right to 
ask? 

If, as I believe, Luke wrote the Book of Acts, 
partly at least, to avert, if possible, a coming or 
threatened persecution, his effort so far was a 
failure. The power of Judaism to injiure the new 
faith ended practically with the destruction of 
Jerusalem (a. d. 70); but the hostile forces of 
heathenism were too strong to be held permanent- 
ly in restraint, and the empire was soon committed 
to a policy of persecution. The causes that led to 
this change of policy were so complicated that 
to state them, even briefly, would require a 
separate sketch; but their power was such that 
they could not be stayed. The empire was at 



The Acts of the Apostles 115 

last led to take an attitude incompatible with the 
existence of Christianity, which it attempted to 
suppress; but after about two hundred years of 
bloody, brutal, and persistent persecution, Chris- 
tianity triumphed, and by its own sacrifices 
demonstrated finally its right and its power to 
live, and to labor, and to enjoy the fruits of its 
labors, even in the strongholds of the most power- 
ful persecutor with which it ever came in conflict. 
The Book of Acts is, in effect, a history of the first 
thirty years of that conflict. 



THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 

The fourth Gospel resembles no other book in 
the Bible; and, indeed, there is none like it in the 
wide world. It has a distinctive character of its 
own, and occupies a position by itself. Of course, 
like each of the other Gospels, the personality 
of Christ dominates it in every part, and pervades 
it throughout; but in tone and spirit it is pitched 
on a totally different key. Even its starting-point 
is radically different. Matthew and Luke open 
their Gospels with an account of the birth and 
childhood of Jesus. In John's apprehension, the 
Christ whom he delineated had no childhood. 
As ''the Word" of God, the manifestation and 
expression of what God is, has done, is doing, 
and purposes yet to accomplish, especially in 
the salvation of our fallen race — thus regarded. 
He existed from all eternity, created everything, 
pervades everything, is the source of all life, and 
that life, in what to us is its highest development, 
is both the life and the light of men. 

Presently, in the unfolding of John's thought, 
this ''Word became flesh, and dwelt among us," 
to the end that we, through the "grace and truth" 
which Christ brought from heaven to earth as a 

Ii6 



The Gospel of John 117 

part of His very essence and being might be saved. 
How this wonderful transformation was effected, 
how "the Word," through a virgin mother, 
"became iiesh, " was, from John's point of view, 
a matter just then of no consequence, and accord- 
ingly he said nothing about it (John i., 1-18). 
From the standpoint he occupied, the incidents of 
the nativity, and the life of Jesus until He attained 
manhood, were of no special interest. 

But the results that were to follow from this 
transformation — from the incarnation of "the 
Word" in himianity — were of transcendent im- 
portance. Humanity was to be remade; men 
were to be "bom anew" (or "bom from above"), 
not so much, in John's thought, by the example 
He set and the manner of living that He pre- 
scribed, or even, primarily, by any sacrificial or 
other theory of an atonement wrought out by 
Himself, as we might naturally infer from the 
earlier Gospels; but rather through the power of 
His personality and spirit working in the hearts 
of men. This was briefly the gospel that Paul 
preached, and here Paul and John were at one, 
as we shall presently see. Neither of them places 
any stress or gives any great prominence to the 
particular incidents of our Saviour's Hfe — that is 
to sa}^ prior to His passion — except as through 
these incidents they are enabled to bring out in 
bold relief the leading facts or truths of His new 
revelation. What we sometimes speak of as "the 
historic Christ" — that is, a person advancing 



ii8 The Gospel of John 

"in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God 
and man" (Luke ii., 52) — ^is wholly foreign to the 
Gospel of John and to the teaching of Paul. 

The fact that the fourth Gospel was written 
thirty or forty years later than the others justifies 
an inquiry as to whether some new and unwelcome 
conditions may not have arisen in the church 
during that time, on accoimt of which arose also 
a necessity for a new and perhaps a somewhat 
different presentation of the essential truths of the 
Christian faith. 

New times, new errors, or heresies, and even new 
beliefs, or new forms of old beliefs, frequently 
demand new statements or new creeds, as the 
later history of the church abundantly proves — 
and of this, the Presbyterian Church of to-day, 
with its late efforts at creed-revision (now a suc- 
cess) is an illustrative example. 

In speaking of new times, new conditions, etc., 
we must remember that the new church, under 
its early spirit of enthusiasm, was undoubtedly 
growing and moving with marvelous rapidity 
in some direction — ^but whither? From Paul's 
epistles we can readily gather the direction of its 
development during his lifetime and while imder 
his guidance. But at the time when the fourth 
Gospel was written Paul had been dead for thirty 
years or more — the period of an average genera- 
tion — and his power of guidance and restraint 
was wanting. John was apparently his successor 
as the apostolic bishop of the churches of Asia 



The Gospel of John 119 

Minor; but as to what was going on in those 
churches during those thirty ^'cars we really know 
scarcely anything except what we can infer from 
what John elsewhere tells us. 

The book of Revelation, generally ascribed to 
John, was written not ver\^ far from the same time 
as his Gospel. Both belong to the same period or 
era of church history — approximately about the 
end of the first or the beginning of the second 
century. In so far as the condition of things in 
the church, its tendencies, its errors, its piety, and 
its prospects, may have influenced or controlled 
John in the preparation of either, the two books 
are on a par. In view of the fact that these two 
records are practically contemporaneous, and that 
both belong to a comparatively late period, as 
above indicated, the letters of John to ''the seven 
churches" (Rev. ii., 1-3) become exceedingly 
interesting and instructive under our present 
inquiry. "Seven " being in Jewish thought one of 
the sacred numbers indicating completeness, it is 
fairly inferable that each of the churches named 
stood for some particular type or phase of religi- 
ous development, and that, taken together, they 
represented the existing religious status, or the 
condition of religion at that time, at least in the 
churches of Asia Minor. 

From these letters it is clearly evident that, 
during the thirty years, more or less, which had 
elapsed since the death of Paul, the real spirit of 
the religion that he had preached to these churches 



120 The Gospel of John 

had largely died out. Some serious and alarming 
heresy, promulgated by the otherwise unknown 
sect of the Nicolaitans, had become firmly estab- 
lished in the church in Pergamimi, to the great 
deterioration of the standard of piety therein; 
while through some other influence in the same 
church religious sacrilege and sexual immoraHty 
had ceased to be matters of censure (Rev. ii., 14, 
15). The metropolitan church in Ephesus had 
fallen away from its "first love" (verse 4). In 
the church in Thyatira, some woman whom, from 
the pseudonym (Jezebel) given to her, I should 
imagine to have been probably a compound of 
Catherine de' Medici and Madame de Pompadour, 
had gained the upper and controlling hand, and 
had introduced into its service some of the vile 
abominations of heathenism (verses 20-23). In 
the church in Sardis the forms of religion were 
still observed, but its spirituality had departed 
and the church was "dead" (Rev. iii., i). In the 
church in Laodicea religion had so far lost charac- 
ter as to become distasteful to the spiritual ap- 
prehension of the apostle, as much so as a drink 
of lukewarm water to a thirsty traveler on a hot 
day, and what little reHgion was left was but the 
religion of formalism (verses 15-17). 

Only two out of the seven churches escaped the 
severe denunciations of the apostle. Between 
Greek philosophy, rabbinic casmstry, and heathen 
idolatry in five of the churches the fountain stream 
along which flowed the sanctifying graces of the 



The Gospel of John 121 

Holy Spirit had become, if not totally obstructed, 
at least so badly befouled and clogged that but 
little was left which John could safely regard as the 
basis of hope for the future. Every one of the five 
is solemnly warned against one or more evils in 
its membership, which, if not speedily corrected, 
would prove fatal to its very existence. Of only 
two out of the seven could the apostle speak other- 
wise than in words of alarm for the future. And 
doubtless he was familiar with the subjects of 
which he spoke, especially if, as already suggested, 
these churches, after the death of Paul, came under 
his apostolic jurisdiction and care. He would then 
have a good right to address them, as he did, in 
terms of high commendation for whatever of zeal, 
piety, and love were still existent in them, but also 
with severest denunciation and warning against 
their back-sliding, which appears to have been 
much in excess of their steadfastness. 

Such being the state of religion, or rather of 
irreligion, at the date of the fourth Gospel, there is 
ample room for the surmise that this Gospel was 
written with especial reference to the alarming evils 
which the apostle then saw to be impending over 
the church, and which, if not speedily remedied, 
could not fail to produce disastrous results. In 
his view, the only remedy was, not a revival of a 
knowledge of the historic Christ as sketched in the 
synoptic Gospels, but a renewed apprehension of 
Him as a spiritual force ever present and dwelling 
in the hearts of men. As Paul had put it in his 



122 The Gospel of John 

day, his religion had for its basis the revelation of 
Christ in himself (Gal. i., i6); and, as appears 
throughout his epistles, he had endeavored to 
instil into the early believers the same vital and 
controlling fact as a part, and the major part, of 
the individual experience of each. But the power 
of this idea or conception of Christ was now lost, 
or at least was no longer apprehended. John, in 
his Gospel, sought to revive it. How did he 
proceed? 

I . He laid down a new law for the adherents of 
the Christian faith: ''Except a man be bom anew 
(or from above), he cannot see the kingdom of 
God" (John iii., 3). Forty years or so earHer, 
the other Gospel writers had put in the foreground 
the law of repentance, but John went farther by 
indicating that a repentance which stopped short 
of or failed to produce a new birth in each individual 
believer, was no repentance at all: it would be of 
no avail as respecting citizenship in the new king- 
dom. Thus he carried the law of repentance to 
its extremest application, and so strikingly and 
impressively set it forth, in connection with the 
Nicodemus interview, as to make it practically a 
new law of the church and a new element of the 
Christian faith. 

2. As part of the interview with an otherwise 
unknown but somewhat disreputable woman, John 
records (John iv.) our Saviour's definition of God: 
He '4s a Spirit," not an emanation, as in the 
gnosticism of the second century, nor ''an in- 



The Gospel of John 123 

fluence outside of ourselves which makes for 
righteousness," as in the agnosticism of our own 
time, but an individual personal Spirit, to be 
worshiped by all who seek Him '4n spirit and 
truth." But what was more to the point, there 
was no geographical locality where He was especi- 
ally to be found for purposes of worship, as there- 
tofore had been the almost universal belief. By 
the Jew, His earthly dwelling-place was thought 
to be only in Jerusalem, and only there could His 
worshipers gain access to His very presence. To 
the Samaritan, His home was on Mount Gerizim. 
But the new record was then made that He is 
present everywhere and to every individual in 
whose heart dwells the spirit of genuine devotion. 
Thus was revealed, not for the first time, but at 
least with new force and impressiveness, the great 
fact or truth that the God of the Christian faith 
would come into direct personal relations with every 
devout 'worshiper at any time and anywhere on 
His footstool. This was a part of Paul's gospel 
to the Gentiles, and herein John follows Paul. 

3. And if Christ was the life of the world, how 
was the spiritual life of His followers to be sus- 
tained, especially as against the errors of faith and 
practice which were then so prevalent and power- 
ful? — for we must remember that no form of life 
with which we are famiHar has the capacity of 
sustaining itself. Some means of sustenance must 
be provided for spiritual life and growth. 

In the little synagogue at Capernaum, on the 



124 The Gospel of John 

next day after the miraculous feeding of the five 
thousand, and in the hearing of many of those 
who had been so fed, Jesus answered this question 
(John vi., 22-59). Solemnly and impressively 
He annoimced the new truth: "I am the bread 
of life." How or in what way does He become 
the bread of life? This is a matter of individual 
experience. Not one person in a thousand has 
any conception as to how or why ordinary food 
sustains and noiirishes the body ; we become hungry 
and learn the rest by experience. In like manner, 
by that course of pure and holy living which leads 
us to "hunger and thirst after righteousness, " and 
in no other way, can we come to learn and to know 
how or why it is that, when we are bom anew into 
His life, that life in us will be nourished and sup- 
ported in and through Him. It cannot be ex- 
plained, it can only be lived, and the duty of 
living it can only be measured by the infinite 
value of the immortal life so to be attained. 

4. Progressively, step by step, John proceeds 
to develop the dominant thought of his Gospel, 
which is, the personal relationship that the indi- 
vidual Christian should sustain to the God he 
professes to worship and serve ; and this dominant 
thought John gradually imfolds until in his hands 
it becomes a relation of oneness with God. When 
that is attained, and so long as it is preserved, 
it obviously follows that the individual Christian 
can no more lapse into heresy or idolatry, or con- 
form to the abominations of heathenism (as the 



The Gospel of John 125 

church was then so largely doing) than God Him- 
self can. Such a thing would be not only im- 
possible, but inconceivable. 

How do we find this idea developed? 

Christ, in John's conception of Him, brought 
into the worid a new apprehension of the nature, 
strength, and extent of the Father's love for sinful 
men. It was a love for the undeserving, the 
unworthy, the wicked, and a love that even death 
itself could not quench (John iii., 16; viii., 42, etc.). 
Paul had understood and preached the same truth 
(Rom. v., 6-8), but the churches to which he 
preached were rapidly forgetting it. 

Next, in the exhibition of this love, as well as 
in their essential life, thought, and being, Christ 
and the Father were one. Christ dwelt in the 
Father, and the Father in Him (John x., 30; xiv., 
10, et seq.). 

Likewise, He dwelt in the hearts of His devout 
followers and by so dwelling He incorporated the 
love and life of the Father into their hearts and 
lives, into their very essence and being, and there- 
by made them like God — one with Him, partici- 
pants in and partakers of His life, and therefore 
able and willing to return His love, and to live 
with Him and Hke Him and in Him (John xiv., 
20-23; XV., 8-17). 

Thus they would be born again or anew, or 
born from above, and born into a new life with God, 
and the union or oneness of God and man would 
be perfect, complete, and eternal. And when so 



126 The Gospel of John 

born and so united with Him, the errors, the back- 
slidings, and corruptions which had crept into and 
endangered the spiritual Hfe of "the seven churches" 
would infest them no more. 

As to what the apostle meant by oneness with 
God, I must say, as I said of the bread of life, 
that it is something to be learned by living it — 
by trying faithfully and diligently to attain unto 
it. Such seems to have been Paul's idea (Phil, 
iii., 13, 14). I apprehend also that the old patri- 
arch Enoch imderstood it, at least in part. He 
*' walked with God" — much, perhaps, as two 
friends with the same interests, tastes, and wishes, 
either cheerfully adopting the choice of the other, 
might walk the same road without a thought of 
dissent or hesitation, and find therein the high- 
est attainable enjoyments of mutual fellowship. 
Along the paths selected by one, the other finds 
it his chiefest pleasure to journey. He wishes no 
other route. By living as he did, Enoch was led 
directly into the presence of the God whom he 
served, for the record adds: "He was not; for God 
took him" (Gen. v., 24). 

It may be added that even our Saviour made no 
effort to explain the full meaning of the phrase 
"oneness with Him." Briefly He says: "If any 
man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the 
teaching" (John vii., 17). In His conception it is 
something to be learned as a result of Christian 
experience, and so far as we now know, it can be 
learned in no other way. 



The Gospel of John 127 

5. Another element of our Christian faith 
received its first full recorded development at 
the hands of John. 

The doctrine of the resurrection became a sort 
of stumbling-block in the early church. This was 
something that lay wholly outside the hopes and 
expectations of heathenism. No Gentile prophet 
or philosopher had ever made this a part of his 
teaching. The uninspired human intellect, in its 
wildest flights of imagination, had never soared 
to the sublime conception here involved. The 
philosophers of Greece laughed at it, as something 
too absurd for serious consideration, as soon as 
Paul mentioned it (Acts xvii., 32). Hence it 
is not surprising that among the early converts 
gathered from heathenism were some who hesi- 
tated to accept so novel and to them so improbable 
a doctrine or belief. Some in the Corinthian 
church, in the days of Paul, denied it outright 
(I. Cor. XV., 12). Others took the view that a 
spiritual resurrection was meant — a resurrection 
of the soul from moral death to a heavenly life — 
and that, as to each individual convert, such a 
resurrection was already past (II. Tim. ii., 18). 

Paul, of course, controverted this heresy with 
his usual emphasis and vigor, but solely on the au- 
thority of the revelation made to himself. That 
is, he did not cite against it any oral declara- 
tion or teaching of the Master. Possibly he did 
not know of any. Whether this heresy continued 
to exist in the church down to the end of the 



128 The Gospel of John 

century does not positively appear, but if we may 
surmise that it did, then the appositeness of John's 
citation of the Master's words (John v., 25-29), 
not previously reported, will be at once apparent. 
The other Gospel writers had preserved His 
revelation as to the fact of a resurrection, but had 
said nothing directly as to what it would consist 
of or how it would occur. John recalled and re- 
corded what the others had passed over in silence 
— that in this resurrection the graves would be 
opened, and that something belonging to the 
personality of the buried person would come forth. 
This citation settled the question for the church 
from that time onward. The predicted resurrec- 
tion was not past ; neither did a moral resurrection 
satisfy its requirements. 

The modern church has gone to the other 
extreme, in teaching as an article of faith ''the 
resurrection of the body'' — a doctrine not found 
in the New Testament. 

From these and a few other considerations of 
like kind, I infer that the fourth Gospel was not 
written (as the others were) by way of general 
setting forth of the Hfe, works, and teachings of 
Jesus, but rather as a special presentation of John's 
matured conception of Him — who and what He 
was — with special reference to the practical wants 
and needs of the deteriorating church as it existed 
about the end of the first century, and thus in order 
to answer or refute the pernicious practices and 
heresies then threatening its existence. And to 



The Gospel of John 129 

quite a large extent he accomplished his purpose. 
The Gnostic heresy died out long ago. The Arian 
heresy has its few survivors among the adherents 
of the Unitarian church. The resurrection heresy 
has not been heard of for centuries. Idolatrous 
and licentious practices, except where the super- 
stitions of the Middle Ages still survive, have been 
driven out. But the church has yet to get back to 
the ** first love " that pervaded the earliest converts 
and also has yet to learn to realize in the lives of 
its individual members, what the Master meant 
by oneness with Him. 



PETER 

Peter was a fisherman, not of the leisurely, 
contemplative, Waltonian kind, but one who 
fished for a living. He had a wife and a mother- 
in-law to support (Luke iv., 38), also a home to 
provide for, though whether he owned or rented 
it does not appear. Nothing is said of his having 
children, but a Hebrew family without at least 
one child (except through bereavement) was rare. 
Of his personal appearance we know nothing 
even by a reHable tradition. It is doubtful if he 
had accumulated much property; if he had, it is 
still more doubtful if he entrusted any of it to the 
apostolic treasurer, Judas Iscariot, who received 
and disbursed — or confiscated (John xii., 6) — the 
scanty charities given to the mendicant band. 
Several years after the Crucifixion Peter's wife 
was still living, and accompanied him at times on 
his missionary tours (I. Cor. ix., 5). Though 
evidently possessed of good natural abiHties, he 
had no education beyond that which every Jewish 
peasant boy received (Acts iv., 13), and this rarely 
extended beyond the ability to read and write 
the Aramaic dialect of everyday life, with a more 
or less general knowledge of Old Testament history, 

130 



Peter 131 

of the forms of Jewish worship, and of the require- 
ments of the Jewish faith. Peter's Epistles show 
that later in life he became familiar with Greek 
and probably with Latin, the official language of 
Rome (Acts x.). But during his early life he 
belonged to the class for whom the high ecclesias- 
tical authorities of Judaism had nothing but 
curses and contempt (John vii., 49). 

Peter was one of the original Twelve; that is, 
one of those who were first called to follow the 
Master. It has been generally assumed, contrary 
to the record as I read it, that the Twelve consti- 
tuted practically an unchangeable body ; that with 
the single exception of Judas Iscariot that body 
continued to the end as at first composed. The 
name of at least one other of the original twelve, 
Lebbffius or Thaddaeus (Matt, x., 3), disappears 
in the subsequent history, and his place is taken 
by Jude, who, with James the Less, was a son of 
Alphaeus (Luke vi., 15; R. V. marg.). The idea 
generally accepted that these are different names 
of the same person is a pure theory, is against 
probability, and has no historical support. And 
the same is equally true of the supposed identity 
of Nathanael and Bartholomew. This is purely 
a supposition, without a particle of proof to support 
it. 

For some reason not stated in the record, 
perhaps by seniority or age, or perhaps by natural 
temperament, Peter became, on most occasions, 
the spokesman of the apostolic band. I would not 



132 Peter 

say of him, as is frequently said, that he was 
especially rash or impulsive ; he was rather what I 
would call self-reliant, being also quick to decide 
and prompt to act. Such men are natural leaders 
in all organizations. He beheved in himself, and 
sometimes overbelieved, as the sequel proved. 
If, during his personal association with the Master, 
he sometimes was ''of little faith" (Matt, xiv., 31), 
it is not for us to censure him more severely than 
the Master did, for Messianic faith was then a new 
plant, quite recently planted in soil not of the best 
for a rapid growth. But after the Pentecostal 
descent of the Holy Spirit, the faith then developed 
in Peter, coupled with the natural self-reliance of 
his manhood, easily made him the first among his 
peers, and one of the three, who, under the name 
of Cephas, presently attained the name and rank 
of ''pillars" in the apostolic church (Gal. ii., 9). 
His discourses, as reported by Luke (Acts ii., 
14-40; iii., 12-26, etc.), are models of bold, lofty, 
and fervid eloquence, supported by compact 
argument. They express in brief terms the great 
essential ideas of salvation, persuasively illustrated 
from prophecy, and convincingly driven home to 
the hearts and consciences of liis hearers. These 
facts lead fairly to the inference that he was natur- 
ally a born leader of men, and that in his dull and 
toilsome occupation of fisherman his opportunities 
for leadership had not equaled his abilities. 

Notwithstanding his faults and defects, Peter 
was one of the three selected by the Master to be 



Peter i33 

the chief recipients of His personal confidence. 
They only were permitted to witness the glory of 
His wonderful transfiguration (Matt, xvii., 1-13). 
They were also the selected watchmen on whom He 
relied to warn Him of the approach of His expected 
betrayer at the time of His agony in Gethsemane 
(Matt, xxvi., 37). At the healing of Jairus's 
daughter, no others were allowed to be present 
(Mark v., 37). No reason is assigned for this 
choice, but Jesus, the Master, undoubtedly knew 
His men (John ii., 25). They were probably 
' ' the pick of the flock. ' ' Their subsequent history 
would indicate as much. With the exception of 
Matthew (in his Gospel) and Jude (in his Epistle), 
the other nine have left no record or known memo- 
rial of their subsequent lives or labors. Of the 
three. James was an early victim of Herod's 
brutality (Acts xii. , 2) . To John was entrusted the 
double honor of closing the New Testament canon 
(Rev. xxii., 18, 19) and of being the last to await, 
in an earthly life, the second coming of the Master 
(John xxi., 22). The subsequent life and labors 
of Peter show that the Master's confidence in him 
was not wholly misplaced, and that he was entitled 
to rank as the coequal of the other two in the 
honors and work of the new kingdom of heaven. 
In making our estimate of the man, his denial of 
the Master should not be passed by. For once 
his self-reliance failed him, and it was a sad and a 
grievous failure — but was it a surprising failure? 
He was at that time a comparative stranger in 



134 Peter 

Jerusalem ; it was not his home ; he had been there 
but seldom, probably once a year, and then only a 
short time; the high priest and his august court 
were to him the objects of overwhelming awe, for 
they represented the invincible authority and ma- 
jesty of the great Jehovah; the Roman soldiery 
who made the arrest were subjects of terror, since, 
being generally brutal themselves, they also stood 
for the brutal and domineering power of Rome 
(Luke xiii., i); Peter himself was nothing but a 
peasant fisherman of the despised province of 
semi-heathen Galilee; the drift of adverse feeling 
against the Galilean Jesus and all his followers 
ran high that awful night; even the servants and 
waiting-maids of the palace joined eagerl}^ in the 
"mad-dog" cry against Him and them, so that 
when they sneeringly and contemptuously asked 
Peter, ''Art thou too a Galilean, and a follower 
of this deceiver of the people?" the load was too 
heavy for him to carry, and he broke down. 
Would you or I, being what he then was, and amid 
such surroundings, have done better? 

It is no answer to all this to say that John was 
faithful and stood by his Master during the events 
of that awful night, and that Peter might equally 
well have done so. For, as John himself tells us, 
he did not enter the palace of the high priest as a 
total stranger; in fact, the high priest knew him 
personally (John xviii., i6). For this or some 
other reason, John was evidently less impressed, 
overawed, or terrified by the unexpected surround- 



Peter 135 

ings and proceedings. His actions show that he 
was enough at home to think of himself, to think 
of the Master, and to think also of Peter, whom he 
recognized in the crowd outside the gate, and that 
he had enough influence to secure Peter's admission 
notwithstanding the probable orders to exclude 
the Galilean friends of Jesus. Hence, in respect 
of Peter's denial, it is hardly fair to judge him by 
the standard of John's fidelity. 

Nor should Peter be singled out, as is usually 
done, as being, next after Judas, the chief sinner 
of the apostolic band. The rest, except John, 
deserted Jesus entirely (Matt, xxvi., 56). Peter 
was the only one to resist by force the outrage of 
the betrayal and arrest (John xviii., 10), and he was 
evidently the only one who ventured to show his 
face that night at the palace gate. The rest 
disappear from sight and history till after Jesus 
was dead and buried and the immediate danger 
to them was past. While these facts constitute 
no extenuation of Peter's sin, they show that even 
in those hours of extreme peril his self-reliant 
courage was not entirely gone, and exceeded that 
of any of the remaining nine. 

If not surprising, it is at least noticeable that 
many of our modern religious teachers are more 
severe in dealing with Peter's shortcomings than 
was the Master Himself. With marked gentleness 
and even tenderness, Jesus uniformly dealt with 
the errors and defects of this, the chief est of His 
followers. (See Matt, xiv., 31, 32; John xxi.. 



136 Peter 

15-19, etc.) Only once, so far as our records 
show, did Jesus speak to Peter with apparent sever- 
ity (Mark viii., 32, 33), and here, I apprehend, the 
severity is more apparent than real. The phrase 
''Get thee behind me, Satan" was probably an 
everyday proverb in common use (and we still 
hear it used occasionally) and, as then used by 
Jesus, was intended to convey the idea that Peter's 
expostulations cotdd be of no avail and need not 
be repeated. Certainly Jesus could not have ap- 
plied to His chief apostle, in its literal significa- 
tion, the name of the Evil One. Such language, 
with such a meaning, would have involved in 
Jewish thought the grossest possible discourtesy; 
and it pleases me to think of Jesus, not only as the 
Son of God, but also as a perfect man, and hence 
an ideal gentleman in speech as well as in act. He 
once denounced, with furious invective, a like char- 
acterization of Himself by his enemies (Matt, xii., 
24-32). To my mind it is simply incredible, at 
least in the absence of convincing proof to the con- 
trary, that He should have literally applied to His 
strongest and one of His most faithful adherents 
an opprobrious epithet such as He would not allow 
His bitterest enemies to apply to Him. Jesus of 
Nazareth was not, in my apprehension of Him, 
that kind of a man. 

For some twelve or fourteen years after the 
ascension Peter devoted himself actively and 
vigorously, and with great success, to the preaching 
of the new religion, for the most part to his own 



Peter I37 

countrymen in the cities and villages of Judaea, as 
narrated with some detail in the Book of Acts, 
but going once as far as Samaria (Acts viii., 14-17). 
The power of the Holy Spirit rested with him to a 
remarkable degree, and the many miracles which 
he wrought in the name of the Master made an 
impression second only to those of the Master 
Himself (Acts iii., 1-9; v., 12-16; ix., 26-42, etc.). 
His escape from the power of Herod by angelic 
interposition was equally memorable (Acts xii., 
1-9). The narrative of these events is the most 
convincing proof of the power of the man in the 
new work, as well as of the sincerity of his conse- 
cration to that work ; and we doubt not that to him 
these events were an abimdant assurance that the 
new kingdom to the establishment of which he 
gave his remaining years would, as Daniel had 
foretold, ''never be destroyed" (Dan. ii., 44). 
His self-reliance, backed up by faith in its success, 
never deserted him again. 

During these years, the power of the new 
religion began to be felt among the Gentiles. 
Christian churches were established at an early 
date outside of Judaism, notably in Samaria 
(Acts viii., 14) and Antioch (Acts xiii., i). If 
Peter were then, as he seems to have been, the 
primate of the apostolic college, he presumably 
would have taken the supervision of these Gentile 
churches, as well as of the Palestinian churches 
composed of converts from Judaism. Unfor- 
tunately, however, he seems to have been so 



138 Peter 

thoroughly pervaded with the prevalent Jewish 
prejudice against Gentile contamination that he 
could give to the Gentile movement but little more 
than a bare toleration. He thrice boasted, in 
answer to what he recognized as a voice from 
heaven, of his Pharisaic purity (Acts x., 13-16). 
He had no use, not even in the Master's service, 
for anything which, tried by the ceremonial stand- 
ard of Judaism, was "common and unclean" — 
and such were the Gentiles in his eyes. And 
though as a restdt of the miraculous vision, he 
temporarily accepted the new revelation that in 
God's sight those of the Gentiles who feared Him 
and wrought righteousness (Acts x., 35) were no 
longer to be counted as ''common and unclean," 
it still appears that as a rule by which to govern his 
own apostolic work he could not, or at least did 
not, adopt it. With apparent willingness, he 
turned over to Paul the entire field of Gentile 
work (Gal. ii., 9), and so far as extant records 
show, he never resumed it, nor made any effort or 
claim in that direction. His right of primacy, 
at least among the Gentile churches (of which we 
are part), ended then and there. We hear of 
him once afterward at Antioch, but his Jewish 
prejudices were too strong for his Christianity, 
and he was publicly and severe^ rebuked for his 
non-Christian bigotry by one who in the Gentile 
churches, possessed and exercised an authority 
greater than his (Gal. ii., 11-14). If, in respect 
of Gentile Christianity, any one was entitled in 



Peter 139 

the apostolic age, to claim or exercise the authority 
incident to primacy, that man was Paul and not 
Peter. As to that fact, the record is clear. 

In regard to the question of primacy in the 
church, it seems reasonably clear that Peter was 
the primate among the Twelve, and that such 
primacy received the approval of the Master; the 
episode of the rock and keys apparently means 
as much (Matt, xvi., 18, 19). The BibHcal records 
also seem to indicate that for a few years following 
the ascension, he acted as primate of the new 
churches in Palestine. It also clearly appears that 
therein he was afterward superseded by James, a 
brother of our Lord and not one of the Twelve, 
but by what authority is not known (Acts xii., 17; 
XV., 13; xxi., 18, etc.). After that, his primacy, 
if he held any, was apparently limited to the 
churches which grew up among the Jews of the 
dispersion — that is, among the Jews scattered 
about through the Roman Empire, and most 
numerous in the cities of Asia Minor (I. Pet. i., i). 
But I do not find, either in the Bible or outside of 
it, that Peter ever was granted, or claimed to hold, 
or tried to exercise, any authority as primate (or 
pope) over any Gentile church, and still less over 
the Gentile churches at large, or that he was 
granted, or claimed to possess, or tried to exercise 
in or over any church whatever any right of pri- 
macy which was divinely authorized or directed 
to be transferred to any ecclesiastical successor 
of his. 



140 Peter 

When, through the power of divine grace 
working in the hearts of men, a church shall arise 
which shall include in its fold the entire body of 
genuine believers on the face of the earth, I have 
no doubt that it may (if it so choose), under 
divine guidance and authority, elect or select a 
primate, a patriarch, or a pope, and that its power 
(not his) will be practically unlimited in all matters 
of faith and morals. But such a church, called 
in the Apostles' Creed "The Holy CathoHc 
Church," is at present non-existent, except as an 
ideal. The sectarian divisions in ''the body of 
Christ" which Paul so vehemently condemned 
(I. Cor. i., 12, 13; iii., 4-7) are now the rule, have 
been for centuries, and seem likely to be for a 
long time to come. "When the Son of man 
Cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" (Luke 
xviii., 8.) 

As incidental to some of the matters above 
referred to, it may be added that questions of 
official name and ecclesiastical rank were not 
regarded as of much importance in the church in 
apostolic days. Paul's right to the title of apostle, 
though he was not one of the Twelve, is univer- 
sally admitted. James, "the Lord's brother," 
who, at least during the earlier da3^s of Christ's 
ministry, was an unbeliever (John vii., 5) ranked 
as an apostle (Gal. i., 19). So also did Barnabas 
(Acts xiv., 14) ; and it seems probable that Androni- 
cus and Junias were similarly styled (Rom. x\'i., 
7). Evidently these matters were bound by no 



Peter 141 

hard and fast lines. On the other hand, Peter, 
in addressing the elders of the churches of the 
dispersion, was pleased to call himself their ''fellow- 
elder" (I. Pet. v., I). 

Our present rigidity in respect of ecclesiastical 
rank was evidently unknown in the apostolic era 
of church history. The ''elders" of Acts xx., 17, 
are called "bishops" in xx., 28. 

Of Peter's subsequent life we know but little 
outside of what we can gather from his epistles, 
but from them we may fairly infer that he labored 
diligently and effectively for the residue of his 
life among the Jews of the dispersion, chiefly in 
the region we now know as Asia Minor, and more 
particularly in its central and northern provinces. 
His first epistle is specifically so addressed (I. 
Pet. i., i). His second epistle was written for the 
same readers (II. Pet. iii., i). These epistles, 
written in his old age, indicate that the self-reliant 
zeal of his earlier years had become toned down 
into something approaching the gentle tenderness of 
John. But he also exhibits a masterly grasp of 
the truths of revelation, and a singular clearness, 
beauty, and force in presenting them. Some 
Gentiles had been gathered in, and as to them, his 
old antipathy was gone (I. Pet. iv., 3). But not 
even yet was he ready to accept the whole of Paul's 
gospel (II. Pet. iii., 15, 16). He could not see how 
it could all be true. Whether Babylon (I. Pet. v., 
13) means the Chaldean city of that name, or is 
a metaphorical designation of Rome — as in Rev. 



142 Peter 

xviii., 2 — is somewhat uncertain. If the former, 
as may well be the case, for that city then held 
a large Jewish population, his missionary labors 
extended nearly or quite to the ancestral home of 
his race. But if the latter be the meaning, it 
would give support to the old tradition that he 
suffered death by crucifixion at the hands of Nero 
about A.D. 68. If so, the prophecy of John xxi., 
i8, 19, was literally fulfilled. But Romans xv., 20, 
is incompatible with the old tradition that he 
founded the first Christian church at Rome. 

Early Christian literature, commencing late 
in the second century A.D., and increasing in 
amount as the decades went by, abounds with 
traditional and apocryphal stories of Peter and his 
life-teachings. Very few of them are worthy of 
belief, though some may possibly be true; but as 
the true cannot, with our present knowledge, be 
separated from the false, the entire body is of no 
practical value for present ptirposes. Peter, as 
the Bible sketches him, is too great to be injured 
by dubious tradition, and is also great enough to 
require no enhancement of his memory by doubtful 
records dating from two to ten centuries after he 
had gone to his final rest. 



THE RESURRECTION: THE FUTURE 
STATE: MESSIANIC PROPHECY 

In the development of Old Testament religion, 
these three subjects have certain points of contact 
which may be profitably studied independently 
of the subjects themselves. 

BibHcal scholars have been greatty puzzled to 
accoimt for the fact that the doctrine of a general 
resurrection, and of a future state of rewards and 
punishments, formed no part of the Mosaic system ; 
for the fact is, as we shall presently see, that the 
Old Testament contains no clear revelation thereof 
until more than a thousand years after Moses had 
rested from his arduous labors. If any of the 
Old Testament worthies had, prior to the captivity 
(B.C. 587), any expectation or hope of a resurrec- 
tion, or of an enjoyable life after death, they cer- 
tainly failed to transmit to us any clear and 
unambiguous record of the fact. And the absence 
of these elements from the original Mosaic system 
is all the more singular for the reason that the 
Egyptians, as we learn from their Book of the Dead, 
had a highly elaborate cultus which included a 
life after death (though not at that time a resurrec- 
tion), and a life, too, the character of which was 

143 



144 The Resurrection 

believed to depend largely on "the deeds done in 
the body." Moses, as one "learned in all the 
wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts vii., 22), could 
not have been ignorant of this feature of the reli- 
gious system in which, as a prince of Egypt, he had 
been trained ; nor is it easy to see how a man of his 
transcendent attainments could have failed to 
appreciate the possible potency of such a belief 
in the moral system that he formulated and taught. 

Why, then, did he fail to include it in the record 
that he left for the guidance of his people? 

The most reasonable explanation hitherto sug- 
gested, so far as my reading has gone, is based 
on the following facts: 

The religious system of Moses originated prac- 
tically with what was seen, said, and done at 
Mount Sinai just after the Exodus. Prior to the 
wonderful event of that epoch, Jehovah was a 
name unknown in the annals of the Hebrew race 
(Ex. vi., 3). 

But on coming to Mount Sinai, they were 
expressly taught that the Deity who had brought 
them out of Egypt — then and thereafter known as 
Jehovah (or Jahve) — had His home or dwelling- 
place there on the mountain-top, and that the 
thunderings and lightnings which they then heard 
and saw were the proofs of His presence. They 
were also taught that He was so actually and 
personally there present that their leader Moses 
had sundry interviews with Him, wherein He made 
known to them by direct revelation the kind of 



The Resurrection 145 

service He required at their hands, as well as the 
laws or rules of life to which they must conform 
if they would please Him; and they were further 
told that if they obeyed Him, He would care for 
and prosper them in basket and in store, in life and 
in health ; while, if they disobeyed Him, He would 
punish them by withholding these promised 
bounties, and, if need were, by famine, pestilence, 
and war, even to the extent of wiping them out 
of existence. He was great and powerful, and 
therefore could do as He had promised. 

He was just and truthful, so that He being always 
there present with them, they might rely on it 
that He would do exactly as He had said. 

In the polytheism of that age — and the people 
had just given up the polytheistic service of the 
gods of Egypt (Josh, xxiv., 14) — such a Deity as 
Jehovah thus described and showed Himself to be 
was exceedingly desirable; consequently they took 
up His service, and entered into covenant or 
contract relations with Him by which they became 
especially and peculiarly His people, and He 
became their Deity — their God. 

But when, a year or more later, they proposed to 
resume their journey to the Promised Land, what 
then? The idea of divine omnipresence — so 
prominent a part of our later theology — had not 
then been born. If Jehovah remained behind at 
His home on Mount Sinai, how could He be of any 
aid or benefit to them while off in their desert 
wanderings, or after reaching their anticipated 



146 The Resurrection 

resting-place in Canaan? Obviously, as they 
looked at it, Jehovah must go along, and the 
record so represents (Ex. xxiii., 14). A tent at 
Shiloh, and finally the temple at Jerusalem, be- 
came His home, and He continued — or so it was 
thought — to dwell with and in the midst of the 
tribes for the next nine hundred years, or until 
the temple was destroyed and the city laid waste 
by Nebuchadnezzar, B.C. 587. But as it was 
believed that Jerusalem and the temple were in- 
vulnerable to human attack so long as Jehovah 
dwelt there, Ezekiel was constrained to conclude 
that before the city fell Jehovah had taken His 
departure (Ezek. x., 18-22). During the captivity, 
the land remained desolate, that is, empty, for 
Jehovah had gone. And at its end Ezekiel made 
known to the returning exiles his vision of the 
return of Jehovah to the new temple — "and I will 
dwell in the midst of them for ever" (Ezek. xliii., 
1-9). 

According to Jewish belief, Jehovah continued 
thereafter to dwell in His temple until the voice 
of prophecy finally became silent with Malachi. 
From that time, say about 330 B.C., until the 
manifestation of the Son of Man, no divine oracle 
was heard in Judaea — of which fact I will have 
more to say presently. 

From which it follows that from the institution 
of the Mosaic system down to the end of the 
prophetic period (except dining the capitivity 
or exile), and possibly for some little time there- 



The Future State 147 

after, the Jews regarded themselves as living in 
the immediate presence of Jehovah ; they believed 
that He actually dwelt first in the sacred tent or 
tabernacle in the wilderness, then at Shiloh, and 
lastly in the temple at Jerusalem — but always 
right "in the midst of them"; that, though in- 
visible to mortal eyes, the Shekinah indicated His 
presence ; that accordingly their lives and everyday 
actions were under His direct personal supervision ; 
that for their honest service and faithful obedience 
He gave them then and there their proper reward, 
and for their disloyalty and disobedience He then 
and there punished them. Moses had so taught 
them, and so did the early prophets. Under such 
beliefs and such teachings, a future state of rewards 
and punishments, even if revealed, would have 
had little or no meaning for them. Jehovah 
could be no closer to them in another world than 
He was in this. Nor could He have any more 
power over them there, either to prosper or punish, 
than He had here. If He rewarded and punished 
them here, as they fully believed, then He and His 
law were presumed to be satisfied. It could 
hardly be supposed that after death He would 
reward and punish them over again. One punish- 
ment was enough, and one reward was all they had 
any right to expect. Consequently they had no 
sufficient incitement or stimulus to lead them to 
anticipate or even to desire a future life, and none 
was revealed, so far as we know. 

Besides all this, the idea, now so common with 



148 The Future State 

us, of personal or individual responsibility for 
wrongs done or sins committed entered but 
feebly into the apprehension of the Jewish people 
prior to or about the time of the captivity. In 
the thought of that day, the nation was the imit, 
and not the individual. Each person was an 
integer of value only as he was one of the nation. 
Hence, logically, it resulted that the nation was 
generally held responsible for the sins of its 
individual members. Thus the personal sin of 
Achan (Josh, vii.) was regarded as the cause of the 
disastrous defeat of the national army. The loss 
of the sacred ark, followed by the humiliating 
domination of the detested Philistines, was closely 
associated with the gross dereHctions of Eli and 
the grosser sins of his sons (I. Sam. ii., 34). And 
once, when David's ambition got the better of his 
judgment, Jehovah is represented as visiting a 
severe but just retribution, not on David himself, 
as our modem ideas would have demanded, but 
on the people at large (II. Sam. xxiv.). Such 
illustrations are of frequent occurrence in their 
history. But obviously, a nation, as such, could 
not be punished in a future world, nor rewarded 
either — at least the Jews never thought of such a 
thing as possible. No more do we. Consequently 
a revelation to them of a future state of rewards 
and punishments for the nation — and it could have 
meant nothing more — would to them have been 
practically meaningless. 

And consequently, as a Jew, under such a 



The Future State 149 

system or theory of belief, would personally have 
had no use for a future state, he would have 
nothing to suggest a resurrection, nor any con- 
scious reason for expecting or even desiring one. 

Now, the idea that each individual was himself 
(instead of the nation) primarily accountable for 
his own misdeeds, and that he was entitled to or 
might expect a personal reward for a life conformed 
to Jehovah's will, though occasionally hinted at by 
the earlier prophets, was fully and unambiguously 
set forth for the first time by Ezekiel (chap, xviii.) 
during the period of the captivity, nearly a thou- 
sand years after the time of Moses. Until about 
that time such an idea had not become a fixed or 
controlling element in Jewish national thought and 
life. But as soon as this, which was about that 
time a practically new revelation, became fully 
apprehended and understood, it was felt that there 
were hosts of individual wrongs that were never 
righted or avenged in this world ; and still further, 
it was noted that the lives of the just were often 
lives of unmerited privation and suffering, on 
account of which there ought to be for such persons 
some future good in store. 

Instinctively a fixed longing arose for another 
life, personal in its character, in which the wicked 
would be punished and the righteous would be 
rewarded. The revelation of Daniel of a resurrec- 
tion and of a future life soon followed (Dan. xii., 
1-3), and presently this doctrine became a con- 
stituent element of the faith of the Jewish church. 



150 Messianic Prophecy 

The date of this great revelation cannot now be 
definitely fixed, but approximately it was some- 
what more than a thousand years after the time 
of Moses and about three or four hundred years 
prior to the beginning of the Christian era. 

Now, while this may not be the real explanation 
of why Moses made no revelation of a resurrection 
and a future life, it would at least seem to be a 
sufficient explanation, and one which is apparently 
true. How does Messianic prophecy stand related 
to these facts? 

Commencing with the grossly idolatrous and 
thoroughly corrupt reign of Manasseh (b.c. 697), 
the Jewish nation started on a course of policy 
which could have no other than a fatal result. 
The prophets, who usually were skilled in politics 
as well as in religion, foresaw and predicted the 
end — the loss of patriotism ; and a nation which has 
lost both its religion and its patriotism is not 
worth saving. There could be but one result. 
The nation, from a race of heroes, as in the days 
of David and Joab and Jehoshaphat, had degenera- 
ted into a race of cowards. It only remained to 
be seen which of the Great Powers of that day — 
Egypt or Syria or Nineveh or Babylon — would 
subdue and take it in. Such, in a general way, 
was the condition of things during the period 
commencing with the early prophets Hosea and 
Isaiah, say in the seventh century B.C., and con- 
tinuing, but each decade growing worse (except 
for a few years under Josiah) , down to the time of 



Messianic Prophecy 151 

Jeremiah, who, in the last chapter of his prophecy, 
makes record of the calamitous result which for 
years he had foreseen and against which he had, 
without avail, given ample warning. The city 
and temple were destroyed, and the people were 
carried captive to Babylon. 

The Jews, in one respect at least, were like 
ourselves — in times of prosperity they took little 
or no thought for the future. But as the coming 
disasters, which finally overwhelmed them, began 
to cast their shadows before, the prophets saw 
beyond the darkening gloom a brighter and a 
better day, which would be ushered in after their 
calamities had gone by. The nation could not 
escape the awful punishment which it so richly 
deserved; but after that was over and past, there 
was a future of glory still beyond. Out of the 
promises and assurances thus made grew up the 
Messianic hope, which, gradually taking shape 
and form as the years of the captivity went by, 
became a source of dominant consolation and 
cheer to the devout followers of Jehovah. If, 
during the captivity, Jehovah had deserted His 
temple and abandoned His people to their fate, 
the royal house of David being involved, as clearly 
it was, in the general ruin of the nation, Melek- 
Messiah — a King-Messiah — would assuredly come, 
combining the divine power of the great Jehovah 
and the kingly prestige of David to deliver them 
from their enemies and to establish a kingdom of 
heaven which should extend throughout all the 



152 Messianic Prophecy 

earth and last to the end of time. This is the 
underlying thought in the New Testament song 
of Zacharias (Luke i., 68-79). 

Such, as I read the history of those ancient days, 
was the origin of the Messianic hope in the Jewish 
nation. It, as well as the hope of a resurrection 
and of a future life, arose out of the calamities 
that culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem 
and the exile or captivity of the nation. The 
necessities of the times created a new exigency in 
human affairs, and opened the door for a new 
revelation, which accordingly followed. 

During the time between Ezekiel and Malachi, 
a period, say, of about 250 years, the idea that 
Jehovah, though maintaining a sort of earthly 
residence in Jerusalem, really dwelt in heaven, 
gradually became a settled part of the belief of 
the Jews; but as the prophet continued to be 
His personal representative, they still regarded 
themselves as under His direct guidance and 
control. The Messianic hope, already in existence 
as above explained, was not forgotten, and in the 
time of Malachi it met with a new reason for 
existence, and consequently received a new 
stimulus. For according to this book, though 
Jehovah is not represented as again taking His 
departure from Jerusalem and the temple. He is 
represented as totally estranged, not only from 
Israel at large (chap, i.), but from the priests as weU 
(chap, ii.) ; Jehovah being estranged, what then? 

They must look to the future for relief. The 



Messianic Prophecy 153 

Messianic expectation was thereupon revived and 
re-expressed in more vivid form (chaps, iii. and iv.). 
According to chapter iii., 16, personal com- 
munion with Jehovah was lost, so that they who 
feared Jehovah, instead of speaking with Him 
or with His prophet, ''spake one with another." 
Still Jehovah was listening and heard it all, but 
He did not reply. The best that could be hoped 
for was that the loyalty and devotion of the few 
who still feared Him would be recorded in His 
" book of remembrance," so that when at last the 
hoped-for messenger should come in His name. 
He would not totally destroy them but would 
"spare them as a man spareth his own son that 
serveth him" (verse 17). And this expectation, 
for the next three or four centuries, constituted 
the sole hope for the nation. But when would it 
be fulfilled? When would Jehovah's estrangement 
come to an end? When would He send His 
messenger, the Messiah, to renew and perpetuate 
the personal relationships which had once existed 
when He called Abraham His friend, and talked 
with Moses face to face? The silence of the sacred 
oracle after the prophetic office came to an end 
thus caused a revival of the Messianic hope to 
which the captivity had given birth — and a 
revival that lasted until, in view of the wonderful 
works of Jesus of Nazareth, those who viitnessed 
them exclaimed in glad surprise, "God hath visited 
His people" (Luke vii., 16). The days of His 
long estrangement were then over. 



154 Messianic Prophecy 

In carrying back the Messianic expectation to a 
much earlier date, say to the time of Abraham 
(Gen. xii., 1-3), or to the still earlier time of Noah 
(Gen. ix., 26, 2i), as many very excellent scholars 
have done, two different ideas have been mixed 
together — ^first the idea of great glory and pros- 
perity to the nation, and through that nation to 
other nations, which is all that is clearly foretold 
in the earlier promises, that is, those made to 
Noah and Abraham; and the other or second idea 
that, though Jehovah, on account of their sins 
would desert or had deserted them, still in the 
good course of time, and in view of their future 
repentance, He would come back again, or, not 
returning in person, would send His servant 
(Isa. Hi. 13 et seg^.) — His messenger (Mai. iii., 
i), one on whom His spirit should rest, one of the 
house and lineage of David — Melek-Messiah, 
Messiah the King. These two ideas of future 
national prosperity, and of a personal messenger 
from Jehovah, though generally confused, should 
be kept distinct. They are different in kind, as 
well as different in time. 

This latter idea or conception is not disclosed 
in any record prior to the degeneracy which began 
with the reign of Manasseh. Deuteronomy xviii., 
15, contains nothing to the contrary; for, though 
written in the spirit and power of Moses, and 
based on Mosaic records and traditions, still the 
Book of Deuteronomy in its present form belongs 
probably to about the time of Manasseh; and 



Messianic Prophecy 155 

what particular personage, if any, Moses had in 
mind when originally he wrote this prophecy, 
is nowhere directly revealed, though Peter finds 
a fulfillment in Jesus of Nazareth (Acts iii., 22). 
The prophet Samuel fulfills its requirements. 

Some of our best Biblical scholars tell us that, 
according to the context, Moses had no particular 
person in mind, but that in this specific passage, he 
predicted the continuity in Israel of the prophetic 
office which he had established — that is to say, 
after his own death, Jehovah would raise up from 
the ranks of the people some other prophet who 
would continue the work which he, when he closed 
his life on Mount Nebo, was compelled to leave 
unfinished. Nor does our Saviour's remark 
(John viii., 56) contain anything to the contrary; 
for, though Abraham doubtless foresaw the "day" 
or time or period of the Son of man, it is not said 
nor even intimated that he foresaw Him as a 
personality. Nor yet can we safely argue that 
the Psalms contain anything to the contrary, for 
the dates and authors of those which precede the 
captivity are matters of tradition and inference. 
The titles to the Psalms are no part of the inspired 
record, and represent at best only an ancient 
tradition. At the same time, it is undoubtedly 
true that when Jesus of Nazareth completed His 
earthly ministry, the earlier promises made to 
Abraham and to Noah, of divine blessings to be 
conferred on their posterity, received their com- 
plete fulfillment, but a fulfillment which, so far 



156 Messianic Prophecy 

as the record goes, was not dreamed of when those 
promises were made. So also were fulfilled the 
later predictions which, revealed and received 
under the stress of direful calamity and misforttme, 
pointed directly to Him as a person. All previous 
history and prediction centered and merged in 
Him; all subsequent history grows out of what He 
was, what He said, and what He did (Col. i., 
15-18). 

The expectation of "a good time coming" 
which is still vocalized in the songs of to-day, and 
which finds its highest expression in the antici- 
pated Millennium, is as old as Abraham and prob- 
ably much older; the expectation of a personal 
Messiah was bom many centuries later, and had 
its origin with and in the same experiences that 
gave conscious birth to a belief in a future state 
and a final resurrection. The revelation came 
when human exigency called for it. "Man's 
extremity is God's opportunity." 



PROTESTANTISM 

It is a striking characteristic of our Western 
civilization that it never stands still. It is always 
in motion, and always moves with a certain amount 
of intelligence — doing or trying to do something 
new, or something old in a new way; continually 
developing angular or tangential tendencies of 
thought, speech, or action in new directions or 
toward new results; making new or remaking 
old experiments; retesting old ideas, old plans, old 
theories, and old systems, not necessarily because 
they are old, but because for some reason, real or 
imaginary, they do not happen to suit, or sometimes 
from a spirit of mere inquisitiveness — much as the 
boy did who burst in the head of his drum just 
to see where the noise came from. Looking back 
we can see that it has, like the boy, sometimes 
acted foolishly. Occasionally it has kindled a 
fire in which it got its fingers burnt; but as a 
general rule its aims and purposes have been good, 
and seldom wholly bad, though sometimes tinged 
strongly with selfishness. 

And this spirit, or, rather, determination to 
reinvestigate everything, re test everything, and, 
if need be, to revise everything, extends even to 

157 



158 Protestantism 



matters of religion. Every truth, religious or 
otherwise, must square up and fit in with every 
contiguous or allied truth, and must also fit in with 
the now existing requirements of humanity; if 
it does not, something is wrong somewhere. Mis- 
fits are either thrown away or held for further 
revision when an increase of knowledge may make 
the work easier. 

These facts become the more impressive when 
compared by contrast with the corresponding 
facts in the civilizations of the remote East, say 
of China and native India, in neither of which, 
except as foreign influences have dominated, has 
there been any material change for a thousand 
or more years. The more prominent civilizations 
of Asia, uninfluenced from outside, are as nearly 
stationary as it is possible for them to be. What- 
ever is good therein is enjoyed; whatever is bad 
is accepted as if it were good, and endured without 
murmur or protest. And this is as true of their 
religions — the religions of Brahm, Buddh, and 
Mohammed — as the reverse is true of ours. While 
these Eastern religions differ somewhat in different 
countries, the differences are as stable as the like- 
nesses. 

It is no part of my present purpose to inquire 
why these things are so. I use them only as a 
starting-point. 

While it is undoubtedly true that our dominant 
systems of religion, generally known as Roman 
Catholic and Protestant, have been largely instru- 



Protestantism 159 



mental in making our civilization, and in making 
it what it is, and while it is equally true that the 
basic principles of our religious faith are not subject 
to change by any human agency, it is also a fact 
that great changes have been made in respect 
of our understanding or interpretation of these 
principles, the forms in which they are stated, the 
relative rank or importance accorded to them, the 
ways in which they have been embodied in church 
and other organizations, and applied century after 
century to the ever-changing necessities, wants, 
demands, or even whims of the very civilization 
which they were helping to make. The Roman 
Catholic Church, for example, which prides itself 
on its stability, the permanency of its faith and 
practice, and its universality as well, is and always 
has been undergoing a process of change, not, it is 
true, by formally repealing or abrogating any 
matter of obligation, belief, or dogma once decreed, 
but rather by silently modifying or quietly drop- 
ping into "innocuous desuetude" such elements of 
belief or practice as have been found by experience 
to be unsuited to its purposes or incapable of 
enforcement; and also by adding new dogmas, or 
new interpretations, or new rules of practice as 
the exigencies of the times might require. The 
careful student of history scarcely needs to be told 
that the Roman Catholic Church of to-day is 
quite different from that of even two or three 
centuries ago ; and any observant traveler can see 
the very considerable dissimilarity which exists 



i6o Protestantism 



between the Roman Catholic Church of America 
and that of Central and Southern Europe. That 
church is a marked victim to change, whatever its 
votaries may argue to the contrary. Generally 
it is changing for the better, and in some directions 
is changing quite as rapidly as the safety of its 
own organization will permit. 

The same is true of Protestantism and of all its 
branches, word for word. People made up as we 
are can no more help changing their systems of 
religious belief than they can help changing the 
cut or style of their clothes. When a nation or a 
people stop thinking, they stop changing — and 
not till then. 

My present purpose is more particularly to note 
some of the more prominent tendencies now- 
observable in the Protestant section of the Church 
Universal, indicatory of present or possible coming 
changes, such as are affecting or are Hable to affect 
its manner of life — premising, however, that any 
such well-developed tendency is fairly good proof 
of some kind or degree of dissatisfaction with 
what already is, and a hope or expectation that 
something better can be found. 

I. Our Western civilization is apparently in 
serious doubt as to the suitableness or efficiency 
(or both) of Protestantism as now organized and 
administered, for suppressing the saloon and the 
brothel, for relieving the unfortunate and reforming 
the criminal. 

The organization and work of the Salvation 



Protestantism i6i 



Army, the American Volunteers, and our numerous 
voluntary relief associations and rescue-homes, 
nearly if not all of which are outside of church 
control, are a conclusive expression of this doubt. 
Philanthropists who inaugurate a new and special 
agency for doing reformatory work, indicate 
thereby a lack of faith in the already existing 
agencies to which such work might properly belong. 
Nor does it help the matter at all that many of 
the devout adherents of the Protestant faith may 
be cooperating largely, and sometimes liberally, 
in aid of these outside agencies, for it indicates 
a like lack of faith or confidence on the part of 
Protestants themselves. Loss of faith in one 
existing institution cannot be shown more sig- 
nificantly than by the organization of another. 
When a living stream finds for itself a new channel, 
the conclusion is obvious that the old channel is 
dammed up, or is inadequate, or for some other 
reason is not satisfactory. The currents of reform 
are, and for some time have been, making new 
channels for the outflow and onflow of the streams 
of work, influence, and power which are to aid 
in the cleansing of humanity. 

Another indication of the same fact lies in the 
clearly apparent and gradually increasing ten- 
dency to invoke the aid of legislation in the carrying 
on of that reformatory work which involves the 
promotion of public morals. Religious forces are 
properly regarded as especially appropriate and 
efficient in the field of moral reform; and when 



i62 Protestantism 



these forces become so far reduced in amount, or 
so ineffective in results, that religious men and 
women turn in apparent alarm, as they are now 
doing, to invoke political aid, such action on their 
part is strongly confirmative of the conclusion 
that religion is on the decline. Legislation is an 
excellent adjunct in restraining or temporarily 
suppressing the comparatively small portion of 
our population which is really vicious; but the 
great majority of our saloon-keepers, and many of 
their patrons as well, are not vicious. For the 
purpose of controlling the non-wicions class, if 
moral agencies are weak, legislation is weaker still. 
If the salt of good morals has lost its savor, society 
cannot be saved, nor can men, otherwise inclined, 
be led into the ways of righteous living by an act 
of Assembly, nor by a hundred such acts. 

2. I feel at least reasonabl}^ safe in formulating 
the conclusion quite generally prevalent that 
Protestantism is steadily losing (if it has not 
already lost) its hold on that very numerous class 
who live by the fruits of their own manual labor, 
the class of employees including mechanics and 
laborers generally, and small tradesmen or shop- 
keepers. 

As to these people, it begins to look very much 
as if Protestantism were a failure. Such people 
are chiefly congregated in our mining, lumbering, 
and manufactiuing districts, and in our cities. 
As to the miners, lumbermen, and factory hands, 
they are left for the most part to take care of 



Protestantism 163 



themselves. Such efforts as are made in their 
behalf are usually feeble or spasmodic, and merely 
amount to enough to satisfy temporarily the 
occasional twinges of an outraged conscience. In 
the cities, our Protestant churches have practically 
become religious club-houses for the especial, if not 
exclusive, use of members and their families. Our 
Christian Endeavor and other kindred organiza- 
tions expend their best efforts in the cultivation 
of individual piety in their own membership. 
Beyond what is meet, they are becoming mutual- 
admiration societies. People of the classes above 
referred to, usually included in the comprehensive 
phrases, ''the common people" and ''the lower 
classes," are fotmd in our city Protestant churches 
in exceedingly small and gradually lessening num- 
bers, and apparently cannot be induced to come 
to them. And the amount of religion they have at 
home is not visibly on the increase. 

This particular evil has long been recognized, 
and repeated efforts have been made to "bring 
them in." Methodism in its origin had this for 
one of its aims — to reach and save the common 
people — and for a hundred years or so it was run 
on those lines, and with marvelous success. But 
for the last half-century, it has been changing by a 
slow process of degeneracy into a close assimilation 
to the other branches of Protestantism, until now, 
in respect of the feature or element here in question, 
the difference is small. It has become much like 
unto the rest of us. The Moody movement 



1 64 Protestantism 



involved also an effort to reach the churchless 
masses. For a time they came to Moody's 
preaching in immense crowds — much as, when 
John the Baptist began his wonderful work, there 
"went out unto him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, 
and all the region round about Jordan" (Matt, 
iii., 5). But in his later years Moody allowed 
himself to be persuaded to walk along the well- 
beaten trails of orthodox Protestantism, so that 
his early work, like that of the Wesleys, though 
some of its fruits remain, is now scarcely more than 
a memory, or a part of the history of unreaHzed 
expectations. Protestantism has changed by 
degeneracy until ''the common people" and ''the 
lower classes" care nothing for it, and but very 
little for the Gospel it professes to teach. The 
exceptions are barely enough in number to prove 
the rule. The causes of the change need not be 
enumerated; they will readily be seen by those 
who really wish to find them. 

Mormonism is in part a substantial protest 
against the indifference which Protestantism has 
shown toward the common or working people, 
especially during the last half -century ; for, con- 
trary to the general impression, the real strength 
of Mormonism lies, not in its religion, but in the 
fact that it is largely a social and industrial organi- 
zation, and as completely so, though in a some- 
what different way, as were the Economites in 
Pennsylvania in the days of their numerical and 
financial prosperity. Mormonism, in substance, 



Protestantism 165 



embraces not only a religious union, but a social 
union, a labor union, and a commercial union as 
well. The Mormon Church sees to it that every 
adult member able to work is provided with a 
means of livelihood, and that his or her spiritual 
interests are looked after also. Those not able 
to work are systematically provided for. It is 
doubtful if labor is anywhere so well-organized 
as by that despotic church, and every producer 
is provided with a market. Their polygamous 
system enables them to take care of the surplus 
female population for whom remunerative em- 
ployment cannot otherwise be found. All are 
thus provided for, and, so far as surface indications 
show, are reasonably happy in the present world 
and well-contented as regards their prospects in 
the next. Possibly Protestantism might learn 
something by knowing Mormonism better. 

3. The failure of Protestantism to maintain 
(except theoretically) the high standard of spirit- 
uality which the Reformers originally put into 
it — God dwelling in man and man in Him, whereby 
man grows into a oneness with Him — even if not 
otherwise apparent, would seem to be proved by 
the sudden rise and rapid growth of the Christian 
Science sect, one chief article of whose creed is the 
identity of God with that which in man is good. 
This is a step, and a long step, in the direction of 
that oneness with Him which is the final aim and 
result of the Gospel of Christ as John understood 
and explained it. I think that the Christian 



1 66 Protestantism 



Science conception of this article of their faith is 
somewhat crude and decidedly hazy, but if 
apprehended and lived by Christian Scientists 
in form and substance as John sets it forth in his 
Gospel, it may ultimately become an arrow which 
will reach one of the defective joints of the Protes- 
tant armor (I. Kings xxii., 34); and if it does, 
the Protestant Church will be likely to suffer for 
its falling away from the high standard of the 
primitive faith. 

I do not wish to magnify Christian Science, but 
still I cannot help regarding it as a dangerous 
protest against our Protestant neglect of that 
particular phase of Christianity which is developed 
in John's Gospel. For while it is largely a system 
of highly seductive error, it still embraces a 
considerable percentage of very plausible truth. 
Its theory of visible nature substantially conforms 
to the Buddhist doctrine of illusion — that all 
visible things are ''Alaya, " illusion. Its good in 
man is approximately the ''karma" theory or 
doctrine of Buddhism, though considerably 
tinctured with Christian sentiment. By an un- 
scholarly but colorable misreading of the Bible, 
it has evolved and adopted a perverted conception 
of the divine Being. To the conglomerate thus 
formed, it has added a semi-realistic, but not 
wholly erroneous, interpretation of the fourth 
Gospel. To this also it has added a mystical 
theory of ''health and disease," the greater part 
of which it borrowed from the " f aith-curers, " 



Protestantism 167 

but which probably contains more truth than we 
Protestants are willing to admit (though sooner 
or later we shall have to) ; and which, still further, 
as it appeals violently to the imagination and to 
our natural love of the marvellous, is an element of 
power, especially among the credulous and weak 
thinkers — classes, by the way, that include the 
large majority of mankind. By this imification of 
God and Good, Christian Science has made 
especially prominent in the spiritual life of its 
devout adherents an element of faith — oneness 
with God — which the Protestant churches have 
practically (though not theoretically) relegated 
from a primary to a subordinate place in their 
compendium of religious truth. In this respect 
Protestantism has made a serious mistake — 
a change for the worse — which, if not corrected, 
is liable sooner or later to prove fatal. 

4. Among the intellectual and moral forces 
that are now guiding the development of our 
civilization, there appears to be a growing doubt 
as to whether the Protestant Church occupies an 
impregnable position in holding that the final 
authorit}^ in all matters of duty and obligation 
is an infallible Bible and nothing else. 

The Roman CathoHc holds to an infallible 
Bible as, and only as, interpreted and suppleirent- 
ed by an infalHble church or by an infaUible Pope 
when speaking ex cathedra in matters of faith or 
morals. 

Which is correct? Or is either correct? 



1 68 Protestantism 



I do not propose just now to discuss these 
questions, or either of them, but only to call 
attention to certain phases of the Protestant side 
of the case. 

(i) For the most part, Protestantism has 
been forced to abandon its old theory of verbal 
inspiration, for the facts will not sustain it. In 
lieu thereof, it adopted and theoretically at least 
still holds to a theory of "plenary" inspiration, of 
which miore presently. 

At the same time, the old theory of verbal 
inspiration is still stoutly maintained by many. 
Moody adopted and clung to it to the last. The 
Mormon Church believes and teaches it. Practi- 
cally our Second Adventists and premillenarians 
also hold to it, at least so far as relates to matters 
of eschatology. And many individual believers 
of profound piety refuse to give it up; but other- 
wise, the general consensus of scholarly opinion 
among our best Biblical critics is to the effect 
above stated. 

(2) There is, however, a section of orthodox 
Protestantism of high learning and scholarship, 
which, on account of numerous well-established 
errors in the oldest and best of the known texts, 
have adopted the theory of the infallibility or 
"inerrancy of the original manuscripts" — that 
is to say, even if the present Biblical text is not 
infallible, the original manuscripts were. But 
as the original manuscripts cannot be referrred to 
for the purpose of verification, the theory has 



Protestantism 169 



found but a limited acceptance; and I mention it 
only as illustrative of how Protestantism is rest- 
lessly moving in certain quarters, with uneasy 
and somewhat uncertain steps, in an effort to 
correct errors of which it is now becoming un- 
pleasantly conscious. 

(3) ''Plenary" inspiration is differently de- 
fined by different Biblical scholars. In fact, it is 
one of those phrases which, on account of the 
uncertainty of its meaning, is used to cover a 
considerable divergence of belief. Generally it is 
imderstood to include the infallibility of the record 
in respect of the particular fact, thought, or truth 
expressed, but not of the particular form of 
statement employed in the expression of it. 

This theory is still maintained, nominally at 
least, by a considerable majority of those who 
adhere to the Protestant faith. 

(4) But this theory is vigorously assailed 
as untenable, and largely for the same reasons 
which led to the general abandonment of the 
''verbal" theory. In lieu of it, there is asserted 
the inspiration and infallibility of the Biblical 
record in respect of all matters of faith and morals, 
including therein all matters of divine revelation 
both as to this world and the next ; all matters of 
moral obligation on the part of man to or toward 
his Maker and his fellow-man — telling him how to 
live and how to die and how to live hereafter — and 
also including a history of the dealings of divine 
Providence with certain individual men, and with 



170 Protestantism 



certain portions or sections of humanity. Under 
this theor}^ history as history and science as science 
in the Biblical record are not regarded as inspired, 
nor the record itself as infallible; though subject 
to the unavoidable errors which even the best and 
best-informed men will make, the history is to be 
taken as correct and the science as the best that 
the writers could have known. ^ 

I have briefly stated these general theories in 
the order of their development, merely to illustrate 
the fact that even our Protestant faith is involved 
in the universal and ever-continuing movement of 
our Western civilization, is changing with it and 
being changed by it. Its theories or postulates 
are undergoing continual re-examination and re- 
vision, not usually in an unfriendly spirit, but 
generally for the purpose of getting at the truth; 
for the old proverb, Magna est Veritas et proevalebity 

^ Two facts, casually picked up, may illustrate the difficulty 
experienced by our Biblical scholars in dealing with the subject 
of inspiration : 

1. The learned Lord Bishop of Ripon, in his valuable Intro- 
duction to "The Temple Bible," freely admits his inability to 
state in words what he understands inspiration to mean. Thus 
(p. 84) he says: 

"I confess that I know no satisfactory definition either of 
Inspiration or Revelation. I have looked through many treatises ; 
I have met with many attempted definitions; but none are really 
adequate." 

2. Dr. De Witt, in a most excellent manual entitled What is 
Inspiration} (Randolph, 1893) formulates a definition (pp. 163- 
164) two hundred words in length. Such a definition requires a 
commentary for its comprehension; and that is really what his 
book is. 



Protestantism 171 



is not a mere "glittering generality," but a 
basic fact in the divine administration of the 
universe. 

While Protestantism is the latest and, up to the 
present time, represents probably the best evolu- 
tion of Christianity, there is still room within its 
precincts for a radical reformation, for it does not 
embody in any practical sense the most perfect 
attainable results. 

In the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, the 
Church of England, and its off-shoot the Protes- 
tant-Episcopal Church of America, the dominant 
element of religion is a ritual. In the Protestant 
and Reformed churches generally, it is a creed. 
In the church of the future, it will be righteousness, 
and a kind and degree of righteousness (Rom. i., 
17, 18; iii., 21; ix., 30; X., 6; Phil, iii., 9, etc.) 
which will end our present wranglings about 
rituals and creeds, and in lieu thereof will give 
dominance to: 

''Whatsoever things are true, 

"Whatsoever things are honorable, 

"Whatsoever things are just, 

"Whatsoever things are pure, 

"Whatsoever things are lovely, 

"Whatsoever things are of good report" (Phil, 
iv., 8). 

A religion whose dominant feature is righteous- 
ness is what the world needs just now. 

Protestantism may live if it corrects its own 
errors and defects; otherwise our civilization will 



172 Protestantism 



reject it and throw it away. But if it dies, as it 
yet may, we can rest assured that it will be succeed- 
ed by something truer — and therefore something 
better. 



LOST BELIEFS 

There are a number of things taught in the 
Scriptures which we of the Protestant faith ig- 
nore and practically reject. Being authoritatively 
taught once, they were either believed or taught 
in order that they might be believed, and hence for 
convenience I term them ''Lost Beliefs." 

I. In Hebrews i,, 14, it is clearly indicated that 
one of the normal, ordinary duties of angelic beings 
is to help those of us who are trying to follow along 
the way that leads to eternal life ; and the interroga- 
tory form of the passage distinctly impHes that 
such was then the belief of the writer and of those 
to or for whom he wrote. It was so well under- 
stood that there was no doubt about it. Since 
they all believed it, the writer had only to remind 
them of the fact. 

The agency of spirits, or spiritual agency in the 
promotion of righteousness among men, is, in our 
modem religious teaching, confined to the office 
and work of the Holy Spirit. Practically our 
faith is centered on this as the only power outside 
ourselves that "makes for righteousness"; so 
that when we invoke divine aid in behalf of our 
infirmities and shortcomings, we rarely, if ever, 
think of any other aid than that of the Holy Spirit. 

173 



174 Lost Beliefs 



But for thus limiting our conceptions we have no 
Biblical authority. On the other hand, in the 
passage above cited, we are plainly told, not as a 
new revelation, but as something then generally 
taught and believed by the Christian converts 
from Judaism, that angelic beings — all of them — 
have it as their proper and ordinary work, to aid 
those of us who are earnestly striving for better 
lives here and for immortal lives hereafter. 

And this being true, why should it not still be so 
taught and believed? And why may we not in 
prayer reasonably and properly invoke angelic 
aid as well as the aid of the Holy Spirit? Do you 
say that it is not necessary, and that the Spirit can 
give us all the aid we need? Doubtess it catiy but, 
according to Scripture, it is otherwise appointed. 
If it be true that, in the divine plan, such work, 
or any part of it, is assigned to angelic beings, is it 
for us to refuse to pray for such needed aid or 
service as is divinely appointed to be rendered by 
or through them? 

It may be noted that the direct worshiping 
of angels forbidden by St. Paul (Col. ii., i8) is a 
very different thing and has no relevancy to the 
subject now in hand. 

While we have no specific teachings on the sub- 
ject, we have a number of illustrative examples in 
the New Testament as to what kind of aid or ser- 
vice by angels has been rendered to humanity in 
the past, the particular manner being usually, 
and perhaps alw^ays, that of a dream. But before 



Lost Beliefs 175 



noting a few such examples, let me add that, so 
far as we know, there is nothing miraculous in a 
dream ; nor is there any case recorded in the New 
Testament of angelic service to humanity (outside 
of its agency in the giving of revelation), the dupli- 
cation of which to a devout follower of the Master, 
and on a befitting occasion, should even now be 
regarded as in the nature of a miracle. It might be 
termed a "special providence," but a special 
providence is not necessarily nor always a miracle. 
The two should be carefully distinguished. 

Outside the prophetical books, the Bible gives us 
a few sketches of inspired dreams; one in Genesis 
XV., 12-17, by which the future of his descendants 
for several centuries was made known to Abraham ; 
one in Job. iv., 12-17, which for combined beauty 
and sublimity is unexcelled in our literature; 
and a third in Acts x., 9-16, which, in connection 
with what immediately followed, first removed the 
stigma of religious uncleanness from the non- 
Jewish nations of the earth — quorum pars sumus. 

For a few illustrations of angelic service to men 
in the flesh, easy reference may be made to : 

Matt, i., 20; ii., 12, 13, 19, 22. 

Luke i., II, 28; ii., 9; xvi., 22. 

Acts v., 19; vii., 30; viii., 26; x., 3; xii., 7, 23; 
xxvii., 23. 

Human experience plainly shows that dreams of 
warning, dreams of a possible future, dreams of 
guidance or instruction, dreams of reproach, 
dreams of praise, dreams that seem to be prompted 



176 Lost Beliefs 



by some extramundane agency, are not wholly 
unknown among even as unsuperstitious and 
incredulous a people as ourselves. Generally 
we refuse to heed them, or dismiss them with a 
laugh, and perhaps to our own serious loss. But 
how may we know an angel-inspired dream from 
any other? Of course, to do so would require 
a moral or religious apprehension which, for want 
of cultivation, very few of us possess. But how 
do we learn to distinguish a sincere conviction 
from a deceptive impulse? the promise of an honest 
man from the pledge of a sleek scoundrel? a house 
of purity from a whitewashed sepulcher? The 
prophet Samuel, in his youth and inexperience, 
failed to distinguish the call of Jehovah from the 
voice of Eli, and it took him some time to learn 
the difference between them (I. Sam. iii.). 
This difficulty is by no means a new one. It 
once existed in connection with prophecy (Deut. 
xviii., 21, 22), but it was not insuperable. I think 
it safe to say that he who sincerely and devoutly 
wishes to learn the things divinely made known to 
him during ''the visions of the night" may learn 
to distinguish the genuine from the spurious much 
sooner and more surely than he can learn to 
separate correctly the men of his community into 
honest and dishonest. ''By their fruits ye shall 
know them" is probably as true of dreams as of 
men. 

A belief in angels as agents in and for the service 
of the devout followers of the Master is one of the 



Lost Beliefs 177 



Lost Beliefs of Christianity, and in my way of 
thinking Christianity is the poorer for the loss. 

2. Another Lost Belief is referred to by St. 
Paul in I. Corinthians xv., 29 — baptism for the 
dead. 

The language employed and the form of ex- 
pression clearly indicate that there was then an 
estabHshed usage in the church at Corinth which 
was generally known by that term. What did it 
mean? 

It will be noted that there is no ambiguity in the 
language used. The phrase ''baptized for the 
dead," or, as the original really means (and ought 
to be translated), ''in behalf of the dead,'' must in 
the absence of evidence to the contrary be con- 
strued as meaning what it clearly expresses — that, 
in the usage referred to, living persons were 
baptized for, or in behalf of, some other persons 
who were dead, and that such baptism of the for- 
mer was believed to inure in some way to the 
benefit of the latter. Such a belief implies a very 
near relationship between the living and the dead, 
and suggests that possibly (as in the religious 
cult us of China) they are not very far apart. 

Many commentators and critics, without au- 
thority and contrary to authority, wSeek to dis- 
tort the meaning of the language here employed 
by Paul so as to make it mean something else. 
With such it is useless to argue. We might as well 
discuss the meaning of the ten commandments. 
But the more orthodox critics try to make it 



178 Lost Beliefs 



appear that in the passage cited Paul neither 
approves nor disapproves the usage in question. 

Critics who so argue have not yet got acquain- 
ted with Paul. He was not a man of that kind. 
There were four things which, as his writings 
plainly show, he especially abominated: Gentile 
impurity, Jewish legalism, human hypocrisy, and 
heathen superstition. Either this usage was 
based on revealed truth, or else it rested on a 
heathenish superstition. If it had been the latter 
we may be reasonably sure that Paul would have 
let it pass by without even a word of disapproval. 
He was writing to a church of his own planting, 
and a church over which he still exercised apostolic 
authority (I. Cor. v., 13; xi., 34b). If we can 
presimie anything on the subject, we must pre- 
sume that its usages and practices either were 
established by him or were based on his teachings. 
Repeatedly in his epistles he condemns innovations 
introduced by others. No error of practice or 
belief seems ever to have escaped him. In the 
passage cited, he speaks as if the usage referred to, 
if not introduced by himself, at least was well 
understood by him and met with his approval. 
After a careful study, I can come to no other 
conclusion. 

Hence I am constrained to regard this as another 
of our Lost BeHefs, and so thoroughly lost that if 
it were now preached from a Presbyterian pulpit 
it would doubtless be regarded as heresy, St. Paul 
to the contrary notwithstanding. 



Lost Beliefs I79 



The loss of both these beliefs can easily be 
accounted for. Two causes have led to their 
being dropped: one is racial, the other is historical. 

(i) The Aryan race to which we belong, of 
all the races of the earth, has both by natural 
organization and by cultivation a minimum of 
superstition and a maximum of incredulity. Our 
intellectual tendencies lead us to believe nothing 
which we cannot apprehend by some one or more 
of our physical senses. In proof of the genuineness 
of Christianity, the argument from miracles has 
with us pretty much lost its convincing power, 
and this simply because we cannot understand a 
miracle even though we may admit it to be true 
as a fact. No more can we understand how in- 
visible angels can affect our lives, nor how a 
baptismal rite performed on a living person can 
be beneficial to an invisible, disembodied spirit. 
But the Semitic races, to which the Jews belonged, 
had no such difficulty. Naturally and habitually 
they believed in things which they did not pretend 
to understand. The blowing of the winds was as 
much a mystery to them as the raising of the dead 
(John iii., 8). The mere fact that a thing seemed 
to be impossible was to them, or in their way of 
thinking, no reason why they should refuse to 
believe it. Hence an intimate relationship 
between this world and the next, or between the 
living and the dead, when authoritatively taught 
as true, presented no stumbling-block to their 
faith. We, on the other hand, beHeve as little of 



l8o Lost Beliefs 



it as posvsible, even though it may be true. As a 
race we are unforttinately lacking as respects 
faith in the unseen. 

To this racial defect may fairly be attributed 
the comparatively small growth among us of the 
ctdtus of Spiritualism, the religion of Emanuel 
Swedenborg, and sundry other systems of belief 
in which the work or agency of unseen spirits 
constitutes so dominant an element. The Aryan 
intellect does not take kindly to such systems of 
thought. The mysteries that involve directly 
our relationships with God and eternity are as 
many as we care to consider. Just at present, 
another Lost Belief — faith-cure — comes in the 
same class. We now regard it with great incredu- 
lity and for the same reason. But of this I will 
have more to say presently. 

If it were not too much of a digression, it would 
be interesting to note how prominent in the 
religious thought of the Mongolian race is the 
nearness of the relationship of the living and the 
dead. The fifth commandment of our decalogue 
has in China a force and potency away beyond 
anything we ever thought of; for they honor 
father and mother not only during life but after 
death — the latter especially to a degree which in 
genuine zeal and pure devotion probably excels 
the poor service that we coldly render to the God 
in whom we profess to believe. 

(2) The other reason for the decadence of 
these Lost Beliefs is historical. 



Lost Beliefs i8i 



In the ancient Hebrew church, prior to about the 
sixth or seventh century B.C., nothing had been 
revealed or was known as to a future life or a future 
worid. Jehovah dwelt at Jerusalem among His 
own people, or at least it was so believed, and 
hence He and they were locally very near to each 
other. Worshipers in His temple came into 
His very presence. He was personally there, as 
was proven to their satisfaction by the Shekinah 
which, as they believed, rested on or hovered over 
the sacred ark in the holy of holies. 

But in the course of time the idea grew up — 
we do not know its origin — that Jehovah had 
another home somewhere up in the sky, which 
came to be known as heaven. Presently, too, 
it came to be considered as the home or final 
resting-place of the pious dead. It was thought 
of as located in or beyond the clouds (Isa. xiv., 
14), but not so very far off as to interfere with 
Jehovah's continued personal presence in Jerusa- 
lem for the good or chastisement of His people. 

Such ideas were natiural enough at that time. 
Science, as we understand it, was then imknown, 
so that the sim, moon, and stars were not ordinarily 
thought of as being other than mere appendages 
to the earth, and not as very far distant from it. 
If heaven was up among the stars, then obviously 
it was not so far away as to be beyond even the 
limited conceptions of that day. 

This idea of the nearness of the next world to 
this continued down well into the Christian era 



1 82 Lost Beliefs 



(I. Thess. iv., 17). And of course, so long as they 
were thought to be near together, a belief in the 
intercourse of the dead and the living was easy. 
But early in the development of astronomical 
science it was found that the starry heavens were 
much more distant than had been supposed. 
Angels and spirits were removed farther off. 
Through the idea of divine omnipresence, already 
an article of faith, God and man maintained their 
former relations, but angelic beings and the dis- 
embodied souls of the saints gradually grew distant, 
dim, and shadowy. 

The discoveries of modern science have pushed 
away the starry heavens almost into infinite space. 
Our astronomers now count the distance of the 
nearest star by a number of miles that rims some- 
where up into the trillions — a distance entirely 
too great for human comprehension. How much 
beyond that is the farthermost visible star, no 
one pretends even to guess. Under all our ideas 
of heaven as a place or locality, if it be such, it 
must be still more distant ; or else, if nearer, it must 
be invisible, and therefore, as a locality, absolutely 
unknown. 

Thus it was that in the apostolic church heaven 
was thought of as near; and the intercommimion 
of the living and dead, or of angelic beings with 
the living, presented no difficulty whatever; but 
as heaven receded in distance, the faith of the 
incredulous Aryan grew weak, and finally broke 
down altogether. 



Lost Beliefs 183 



3. While faith-cure latterly has had some 
adherents, it was for many centuries a Lost BeHef, 
and in its relationship to the present dominant 
systems of Christian thought it must still be so 
classed. Its chief interest at the present time 
grows out of the fact that it includes a large section 
of the peculiar "ism" that is misnamed ''Christian 
Science." I believe that Christian Scientists 
repudiate any belief in what is commonly known as 
faith-cure, but they do so simply because, as they 
deny the existence of disease, they of course deny 
the existence of any "cure. " But as I understand 
their somewhat nebulous theories, they propose 
by faith, prayer, "good thoughts," etc., to elimi- 
nate from the human consciousness that which 
we call disease. This necessarily includes both 
prevention and "cure." In this sense the follow- 
ers of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy are faith-curers, 
even though they may repudiate the name. 

That in the apostolic church there was a preva- 
lent belief in some kind of a faith-cure, sufficiently 
appears from James v., 14, 15 and I. Corinthians 
xii., 9. Possibly Mark vi., 13 should be added. 

It is true that it is not unusual for the pastors 
of our modem churches even yet to pray with and 
for the sick; but with our racial lack of faith in 
what we do not understand, we still, as respects 
cure, place more reliance on the quinine of the 
physician than on the prayers of the ecclesiastic. 

A cause other than those above-named aided 
largely in making faith-cure a Lost Belief. Early 



184 Lost Beliefs 



in its history the Roman Catholic Church, which 
dominated the religious thought of Etirope for 
many centuries, interpreted the faith-cxire of the 
apostolic church as being a cure not of physical but 
of moral disease, that is, of sin, and accordingly it 
appropriated the passages above cited to the 
support of the theory or doctrine involved in its 
sacrament of extreme unction. And while the 
leaders of the Protestant Reformation and their 
successors have never failed to denounce this as a 
perversion of Scripture, they have made no serious 
effort to restore this Lost Belief to its rightful 
place in the system of religious thought and life 
in which we live. Practically it has continued 
to be a Lost Belief to the present time, though a 
few efforts have latterly been made here and there 
to resuscitate it. 

It is also true, and every physician knows it to 
be true, that faith in something or in somebody is a 
powerful factor in the treatment of disease. It 
may be faith in the physician or in his medicine; 
or it may be the faith which a self-confident man 
may naturally have in his own vitality, or a faith 
prompted by his own wilful determination to live; 
or it may be a faith based on the promises and hopes 
of the religion in which he professes to beHeve. 
For the purposes of recovery from sickness any 
faith is better than no faith. 

Under the modem microbe theory of disease, 
our best medical authorities are beginning to 
suspect that faith-ciu-e may not be quite so im- 



Lost Beliefs 185 



scientific a system as for a thousand years or more 
it has been generally believed to be. In some 
diseases, or in some phases of disease, there appears 
to be an irrepressible conflict between the life- 
force or vitality of the sick man and the life of 
the unfriendly microbe — life vs. life. Which is the 
stronger and more enduring? One or the other 
is boimd to prevail. If, through the nervous 
organization of the patient, his life-force or vital- 
ity (I use these words to indicate something that 
nobody fully understands) can be maintained, 
stimulated, or increased, such life-force or vitality 
may, it is suspected, act distinctively on the life 
of the disease-producing microbe and kill it. In 
that case the man will get well. Medicine deleteri- 
ous to the microbe may aid in the conflict, but if 
this theory of life-energy should prove to be true 
(as now seems not improbable), then such agency 
will very likely be found to be more efficacious than 
the medicine administered in securing the final 
and desired result. 

And what more powerful stimulant can there be 
to the maintenance of life-force or energy than a 
strong, unwavering, unflinching faith? And 
where else can we look for an equally sure and 
equally reliable and equally efficient basis or 
support for such a faith, than in the hopes and 
promises of the holy and perfect religion which we 
profess? The faith-cure of the apostolic church 
now seems in a fair way to be vindicated and 
adopted by the best medical science of the age. 



1 86 Lost Beliefs 



and that too at no very distant day. Stranger 
things have happened within the comparatively 
short time covered by my own recollection. 

And when, as now seems not unlikely, faith-cure 
becomes a science, I have no doubt that we skepti- 
cal Aryans will universally believe and adopt it, 
and will do so simply because it will then appear 
that, as respects the curing of disease, faith is a 
recognizable force, operative in a scientific way, to 
or toward an attainable and desirable end — the 
preservation of life. 

Will man then become immortal? Hardly; but 
we can well afford to wait and see. 

The fact is that we Aryans have selected from 
the teachings, practice and usages of the apostolic 
church those features or elements of the Christian 
faith which we deem to be essential or vital, and 
such others as, with or without modification, may 
suit our own peculiar inclination or habits of 
thought. The rest we reject or ignore. In other 
words, out of the materials furnished to us, we have 
evolved a form of Christianity peculiarly our own ; 
perhaps I should say several forms, for from the 
same data we have developed the multitudinous 
beliefs which differentiate our divided and sub- 
divided sects, though all agree on certain essentials. 

What are these essentials? There are three of 
them, and only three: A belief (i) in one God; 

(2) in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of men, imto 

(3) an immortal life. All else is derivative there- 
from. Thus considered, Christianity is the most 



Lost Beliefs 187 



flexible religion on the face of the earth. Having 
selected and evolved a system or form of Chris- 
tianity which suits ourselves, it is not for us to say 
that other races, as the Mongolian, or Turanian, 
or Dra vidian, or even the Semitic, must adopt the 
same just as we have shaped it. I am not thor- 
oughly informed as to the peculiarities of these 
other races, but I doubt if our Presbyterian system, 
for example, will ever commend itself to their 
general acceptance. They all differ from us 
radically, and some of them almost interminably, 
in manner or ways of seeing, thinking, and doing 
on all subjects and in all things. Each and all of 
these races have the same right as ourselves, after 
aqcepting the essentials, to select and evolve a 
system or form suitable to their own wants and 
peculiarities; and the Christian missions ought to 
be conducted on that basis and to that end. 

I believe in the final and universal prevalence of 
the Christian faith, but it will be a form of faith 
in which all nations and races can unite. It will, 
in my apprehension, drop out as imessential, 
irrelevant, and optional, fully nine tenths (a low 
estimate) of oiu* now dominant creeds. Was it 
not a genuine prophet of Jehovah who proclaimed : 

"And what doth the Lord require of thee but to 
do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God?" 

Any form of Christianity evolved along the 
Hnes thus marked out is good enough for any man 
and for all men — for all the races of mankind. 



1 88 Lost Beliefs 



4. The Presbyterian Confession of Faith con- 
tains, inter alia, the following : 

"The visible Church . . . consists of all those 
throughout the world, that profess the true religion, 
together with their children'' (chap, xxv., sec. 11). 

So much of the above as I have italicized is, in 
our branch of the Protestant Chtu-ch, as well as 
in many others, practically a Lost Belief. The 
Roman Catholic, the Greek, the Anglican, the 
Protestant Episcopal, and a few other churches 
both believe and practise it. In such churches 
the children are, by right of birth, nominal members 
of the church from infancy, and usually are so 
counted. On arriving at years of discretion, they 
are, after a short preparatory training, and on 
assenting to a prescribed formula, duly admitted 
to full membership, and this as a matter of course. 
To be a ftdl member of the church is thought to be 
as much a duty, and also a privilege, as for a good 
citizen to be a member of some political party. 
It is so preeminently fit and proper, that in such 
churches no one thinks of doubting or disputing it. 

While we of the Presbyterian faith profess a 
belief in the same theory of church membership, 
with us it is scarcely more than a theory. In 
practice we have dropped it, and our usage is the 
same as if no such words were contained in our 
creed. The only relic of this belief that we still 
retain is the ordinance of Infant Baptism — in 
support of which, by the way, we are imable to 
cite any New Testament authority. 



Lost Beliefs 189 



Whether we and sundry other Protestant 
churches have gained or lost by practically drop- 
ping this portion of our creed, is a question I am not 
prepared to discuss. Just at present, I don't 
know; but my impression is that we have lost more 
than we have gained. 



REVELATION 

The Book of Revelation is a book of contradic- 
tions. Nothing could be more matter-of-fact 
than some of its statements (chaps, ii., iii.). In 
other portions the imagery employed is as wild, 
grotesque, and imcouth as that of Ezekiel (Rev. 
iv., 7, 8; xii., 3). Some passages show that the 
writer took positive pleasvire in exhibiting what it 
is no exaggeration to call a hellish spirit of in- 
human and malignant revenge (xiv., 8-12); while 
in other passages he shows equal delight in sketch- 
ing the gloriously beatific life which awaits a 
redeemed humanity (chaps, xxi., xxii.). The 
book deals with time and eternity, with God and 
Satan, with heaven, earth, and hell, with saints 
and harlots, with dragons and frogs, and with 
nearly everything that intervenes. 

The prevalent theories as to the origin and 
authorship of the book are as discordant as its 
contents. Apparently good and substantial 
reasons support the belief that it had but one 
author; other equally substantial reasons seem 
to indicate that it had a plurality of authors. 
Strong evidence exists that its authorship should 
be attributed solely to the apostle John; 

190 



Revelation 191 



but many Biblical critics of high rank avow 
their conviction that another John, known as 
John the Presbyter, was its author. Still others 
aver, and for reasons of no little cogency, that 
neither of the two wrote it, and that its author 
is unknown. Again, the date of its composition is 
an imsettled matter — all possible dates being 
assigned by equally good Biblical scholars from 
about A.D. 66 down through a hundred or more 
years thereafter. Nor can the advocates of these 
various theories be arranged under any general 
classification of orthodox and heretical, for some of 
our most unorthodox critics are among the strong- 
est advocates of orthodox theories, and vice versa. 

From my standpoint, however, none of these 
variant theories have anything to do with the 
canonical character of the book. I accept it as a 
part of the inspired record, no matter who wrote 
it, nor when it was written, nor whether it had one 
or several authors. Premising this, I will present 
some of the facts and conclusions which I think 
are at least reasonably clear and which, if kept in 
mind, will aid materially in an understanding of 
its somewhat obscure and confusing contents. 

I. The first three chapters were written at a 
time of great and alarming religious decadence in 
the churches of Western Asia; and they were 
written for the purpose of arresting such decadence 
and restoring therein the primitive standards of 
faith and practice. The specific contents of the 
several epistles to the seven churches clearly 



192 Revelation 



prove so much. Out of the seven, only two, 
Smyrna and Philadelphia, are exempt from the 
severest reproof and warning. Gross heresies and 
alarming degeneracy marked the religious life 
of all the others. And what was true of these 
seven was probably true of the churches of that 
region generally; for, standing as they did at the 
leading centers of influence, they doubtless rep- 
resented the general drift of the religious develop- 
ment of the day. 

2. These churches were of Paul's planting; and 
though he foresaw and predicted such a period of 
degeneracy (Acts xx., 29, 30), it is reasonably 
certain from the contents of his later epistles, 
particularly Ephesians and Colossians (written 
about A.D. 62), that it did not come during his 
lifetime. 

3. After the death of Paul an apparently 
reliable tradition indicates that John the Apostle 
succeeded to the bishopric of these churches. 
The writer of these three chapters writes as their 
Bishop properly might, that is, with a tone of 
authority — just as if he had an official right to say 
what he did, and a right which these churches 
could not refuse to recognize. 

These facts would seem fully to justify the 
conclusion that John the Apostle was the writer 
of these first three chapters, and that they were 
written some years after Paul's death, and some- 
where along toward the end of the first century, 
say about a.d. 90-92. 



Revelation 193 



4. It also appears that at the time John wrote 
these three chapters there existed in his mind an 
expectation of some general and severe persecu- 
tions which were soon to come on the churches 
(Rev. ii., 10, 16, 23; iii., 3, 10, 19). Such a perse- 
cution arose imder the Emperor Domitian, a.d. 
93~96. So far as we know, this was the first 
general persecution of Christians as such, though 
numerous local persecutions had occurred pre- 
viously, some of which were both bitter and brutal. 
But up to the time of Domitian, while many 
individual Christians, and in fact large numbers of 
them here and there in the empire, had suffered 
grievously on account of their faith, and especially 
so at Rome under Nero (a.d. 64-68), the general 
policy of the empire was not at first hostile to the 
church as such. But some time during the twenty- 
five years that intervened between Nero and 
Domitian the imperial authorities gradually woke 
up to the fact that the supremacy of the church 
meant the destruction of the empire, and so it 
turned out. For after two or three centuries of 
bitter and bloody conflict the church triumphed, 
the empire was defeated and (except in name) 
perished from the earth by a slow process of 
disintegration. The name continued to the time 
of the first Napoleon, who finally wiped it out, 

A. D. 1805. 

5. These first three chapters clearly constitute 
by themselves a separate section of the book. 
I see in them no direct relevancy to what follows, 



194 Revelation 



either in respect of subject-matter, authorship, 
or date of composition. The remainder of the 
book is for the most part dramatic in character, 
and seems to be made up chiefly of two separate 
dramas, composed at different times; and, as here 
recorded, the conclusion of one runs into the 
opening sections of the other. The concluding 
drama is apparently the earlier in date, and 
greatly excels the first in point of sublimity and 
grandeur. Both, however, treat of the same 
subject and in about the same way; both have a 
common origin and proceed to a common end. 
All this I hope to make clear as we proceed. 

6. The first drama, as recorded, opens with 
chapter iv. Here we enter an entirely different 
atmosphere, or come into new conditions of 
thought and experience. The powers of heaven — 
so runs the vision or dream — are assembled in a 
council-room or hall of state, such as was usual in 
Oriental courts. The Book of Job opens in the 
same way. The writer, as a prophet or seer, in 
vision sees himself admitted, and he first describes 
the glorious personnel of the assemblage and the 
magnificence of the place where the coimcil was 
held. He tells us who were there, and describes 
in detail the exercises of devout worship by which 
the council was opened and constituted. Obvious- 
ly so grand a council would be held only for some 
great purpose, a piupose worthy of so great an 
occasion. A sealed book or roll — a roll seven times 
sealed and therefore presumptively containing 



Revelation 195 



something of vital importance to the universe at 
large — was held in the hand of the presiding Deity. 
Evidently the council assembled with a confident 
expectation that its contents would be made 
known, and that thus would be learned what the 
future had in store for the world or for the church 
(Rev. iv., i). That the citizens of heaven were 
as ignorant on such subjects, and as anxious to 
learn, as the dwellers on earth, may fairly be in- 
ferred from I. Peter i., 12, and Mark xiii., 32. 

The drama, or tragedy — for such it was — is 
opened by the proclamation of an angelic herald 
of high rank (Rev. v., 2) calling on any one in the 
wide universe who deems himself qualified for the 
work, to come forward and break the seals and 
open the roll. A pause followed : no one immediate- 
ly appeared ; and those who were present hesitated, 
as well they might, to respond to such a call. 
So momentous was the occasion — so awe-inspiring 
and so pregnant for weal or woe — that for a time 
no one ventured to volunteer. The distress of 
the Seer (verse 4) — who evidently represented 
our humanity — doubtless expressed the feeling 
of disappointment that prevailed throughout the 
assemblage. Finally one was found — no less a 
person than He who redeemed humanity. His 
worthiness could not be questioned ; His willingness 
was His own; and thereupon the entire council 
imite in joyous acclaim of exalted praise (verses 
9, 10). Angels innumerable join in the chorus 
(verses 11, 12), and even feeble humanity itself 



196 Revelation 



finds in the prospect good reason for the most 
ecstatic rejoicing (verses 12, 14). The world or, 
perhaps better, the church will now learn for the 
first time what not even the angels knew, the 
coming prospects and final success of the work of 
redemption. 

7. The differently colored horses and different- 
ly accoutred riders that appeared and departed on 
their respective missions, on the breaking of the 
first four seals (vi., 1-8), were not regarded by the 
Seer as involving the particular disclosures he was 
looking for: hence he passed them by with but a 
brief mention of each. They revealed nothing 
but what was common in human history, and had 
been so for thousands of years. War and conquest, 
famine, starvation, and death, ''Man's inhuman- 
ity to man," were written all over the records of 
the past. That this should continue for all time, 
the Seer could not believe. Hence he hiuried 
on to the opening of the fifth seal (verses 9-1 1). 
With this the great subject-matter of the awful 
drama is brought to the front, for the souls of the 
victims of Roman atrocity, from Nero to Domitian, 
as though unable longer to restrain their intense 
longing for the revenge on hated Rome, shout out 
(i.e., ''with a great voice") their appeal: "How 
long, O Master, the holy and true, dost thou not 
judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell 
on the earth?" (Verse 10.) 

Here we have the text, the key note, the central 
thought of this wonderful drama, to the portrayal 



( 



Revelation 197 



or delineation of which a good part of the book is 
directly devoted. Revenge on Rome (figuratively 
called Babylon, for a direct use of the name Rome 
would have been high treason) breathes through, 
animates, and dominates the majestic develop- 
ment of this great drama as well as the next. For 
designating and characterizing hated Rome, no 
term of execration was too severe, too horrible, 
too obnoxious, or too filthy. As more fully 
characterized in the second drama, Rome was a 
monstrous, hideous, misshapen dragon (xii., 3), 
a ferocious, blasphemous beast (xiii., i, 2), the 
ally of Satan (xii., 9), a gorgeously arrayed but 
filthy harlot — the incarnation of harlotry, and as 
such gorged to drunkenness, "with the blood of 
the saints" (xvii., 1-6). Accordingly the writer 
cursed Rome, as Job in his dire affliction cursed 
the day of his birth (Job iii., 1-19); as Shimei 
cursed David (II. Sam. xvi., 5-14) ; as the Psalmist 
cursed Edom (Ps. cxxxvii., 7-9); as Isaiah cursed 
the real Babylon (Isa. xiii., xiv.). In the matter of 
invoking curses on their enemies, the people of the 
Semitic races are said to possess exceptional 
fluency, and the Book of Revelation bears evidence 
of this. 

But the time for this revenge had not, in the 
divine plan, yet come. The persecution of the 
church was not yet ended. Still others of "their 
fellow-servants and their brethren" were yet to 
undergo the terrible experiences of martyrdom. 
Until they "should have fulfilled their course," 



198 Revelation 



these appellants for vengeance must wait, even 
though their appeal was just. In the meantime, 
and apparently as a special mark of honor — for 
such was the Oriental usage — to each one was given 
"a white robe" (Rev. vi., 11). 

8. I do not think it possible to correlate the 
different elements of this dramatic picture, or 
panorama, with the successive events of human 
history to any such extent as to find even an 
approximately exact correspondence therewith. 
In construing the visions, the dreams of prophets 
and seers, we are to look only for general effects, 
not for historical details. Neither, as a general 
rule, does the element of duration or of time-how- 
long enter into the dramatic picture. The writer 
records what he sees, and usually, though not 
always, notes the order in which the incidents of 
the vision follow each other, but rarely the time 
occupied by each — much as in an ordinary dream, 
say of a voyage to Etirope and back, which, though 
vivid and apparently real, may last only a few 
minutes. Such exceptions as occur in the present 
narrative will be noted as we proceed. 

For these reasons I am unable to speak \\dth 
any approach to certainty as to the duration of 
time which may be covered by the events pictured 
or referred to as occurring thus far. The writer 
gives no key by which that matter may be deter- 
mined. Probably he himself did not know, for 
otherwise we may reasonably presume that he 
would have told us. Nor have I yet found any 



Revelation 199 



commentator whose exposition herein has appealed 
to me as sufficiently clear and certain to be adopted 
as a matter of belief or faith. For myself, I am 
in the position of one awaiting further light and 
knowledge. 

9. The marvelous panorama that gradually 
unrolled before the vision of the writer on the 
opening of the sixth seal (Rev. vi., 12-17) bears a 
striking resemblance to the events which, in the 
popular apprehension of the early church, were 
immediately associated with the expected early 
return of the Master — an event which Paul con- 
fidently looked for during the lifetime of the genera- 
tion then living (I. Thess. iv., 17). Peter also 
thought that it was near at hand (I. Pet. iv., 7), 
as also did the writer of the book we are considering 
(Rev. xxii., 7, 12, 20). The occurrence of un- 
natural phenomena in the natural world was 
generally believed to forecast His coming. He 
himself foretold such signs (Matt, xxiv., 29; Luke 
xxi., 25-27) ; so did Peter (H. Pet. iii., 10-13) ; and 
Paul appears to have had somewhat similar 
expectations (11. Thess. i., 7-10). The events 
which thus, in the writer's vision, followed the 
opening of the sixth seal, were doubtless supposed 
by him to indicate that the second coming of 
Christ was thereby presaged, that it was near at 
hand, and that when He came, it would be partly 
at least for vengeance upon Rome. So much at 
least seems to be implied in Revelation vi., 17: 
"a great day of wrath" was impending, and so 



200 Revelation 



terrible would that wrath be that no one would be 
"able to stand." 

10. Apparently as a part of the chaos that 
followed the opening of the sixth seal, the writer 
saw the vision of the four angels of chapter vii., 
1-3. At this moment the majestic development 
of the drama is arrested, for not yet have we had 
any report of the later martyrs, the "fellow- 
servants" and "brethren" who, according to 
chapter vi., 11, were to meet their fate and be 
gathered in before the appeal of the earlier martyrs 
(verse 10) for revenge could be entertained. These 
must be accounted for, and their safety assured. 
Accordingly, a census is attempted: "a hundred 
and forty and four thousand, sealed out of every 
tribe of the children of Israel" (Rev. vii., 4) ex- 
presses the idea that the salvation of Israel is com- 
plete: they are all there. The writer was evidently 
a Jew by nationality, and he gloried in a vision of 
the realization of what to Paul in his day was not 
in ;sight — the salvation of Israel (Rom. xi., 25). 
The Gentiles too were there, in coimtless numbers, 
"out of every nation, and of all tribes and peoples 
and tongues" (Rev. vii., 9). While especial 
mention is made of those who had "come out of 
the great tribulation" (verse 14), as though per- 
secution had spent its fury, the account seems to 
indicate that all the redeemed had been gathered 
in, and the writer might very naturally have 
thought so, in view of his expectation that the 
Master was coming "quickly," as already noted. 



Revelation 201 



And if the harvest unto eternal life was then 
thought to be complete, nothing could be more 
fitting than the songs of grateful praise that 
celebrated the consummation of the great work of 
human redemption (verses 10, 11). The best 
that heaven offered or could offer was at their 
disposal (verses 15-17), and they awaited the 
opening of the seventh and last seal, which would 
surely bring the longed-for but delayed revenge 
on persecuting Rome. 

II. On this, "there followed a silence in 
heaven about the space of half an hour" (Rev. 
viii., i) — as though all the inhabitants of the celes- 
tial world, angels and men, stood aghast or in terror 
at what was presented to their view. The time 
for revenge, not only on Rome but on all the 
agencies of evil, had now come ; and so appalling 
was the revenge to be that no one put forth either 
hand or voice to hasten its infliction. Even the 
martyred victims of the most cruel atrocities that 
human depravity could suggest or contrive were 
silent with the rest, much as if they too hesitated 
at the awfulness of the vengeance they had so 
ardently implored. But the last seal was broken; 
the divine decree must be executed, and the instru- 
ments of vengeance, seven angels with seven 
trumpets, stood forth in array, and "prepared 
themselves to sound" (verse 6). 

Before they did so, however, as if some further 
justification were needed for the dreaded events 
that were to follow, the "prayers of all the saints" 



202 Revelation 



— doubtless the prayers of the thousands of mar- 
tyrs mangled alive by savage beasts or burned 
alive by more savage men, as a means of adorning 
the festal days and nights of Roman brutality; 
prayers that could not be forgotten for deHverance 
from atrocities that could not be forgiven — these 
prayers of the martyred saints were gathered 
together as incense, and burned in the presence 
of Him of whom the record runs: ''Vengeance is 
mine; I will repay, saith the Lord" (Rom. xii., 19). 
And in attestation of the fact that in the infliction 
of the coming retribution of Rome no mercy was to 
be shown, the angel loaded the now empty censer 
with fire from the altar of vengeance, and tragically 
''cast it upon the earth" (Rev. viii., 3-5). Thus, 
emblematically, the doom of human and satanic 
wickedness was then sealed; probation was ended, 
and the instruments or agencies of divine retribu- 
tion proceeded to their work. 

12. It is not necessary for my present purpose 
to follow in detail the horrors narrated as the de- 
velopment of this aw^ul drama slowly proceeds. 
It is not pleasant reading, for it is written in the 
spirit of Moses when he wrote Deuteronomy xxviii., 
15-68; in the spirit of Samuel and Saul when they 
wiped out Amalek (11. Sam. i., 15) ; in the spirit of 
David when he tortured his captives to death imder 
saws and harrows and axes and in brick-kilns (II. 
Sam. xii., 31) ; in the spirit of the writer of the im- 
precatory Psalms — the spirit which everywhere and 
always demands "an eye for an eye, and a tooth 



Revelation 203 



for a tooth" (Matt, v., 38), and sometimes with 
compound interest added. Thus runs the record 
from Revelation viii., 6 through chapters ix., x., 
to xi., 13. Nor do I find anything in this portion 
of the book that appears to correspond with any 
specific history of which we have any record. 
That it all once had a meaning does not admit of 
doubt, but the key to its meaning is lost ; and the 
asserted analogies between the events of subse- 
quent history and the vivid but indefinite sketches 
of these chapters are altogether too remote, 
uncertain, or fanciful to furnish anything like a 
reliable guide for the purpose of interpretation. 
13. With these chapters, however, we come to 
one of the vexing questions in Biblical criticism. 
Chapter x. (except verse 7) and chapter xi., 1-13 
were apparently written by some other and earlier 
writer than the author of the previous portions of 
the book. The latter, probably finding them 
extant and anonymous, and that they suited his 
purpose, inserted them at this place in his narra- 
tive. While this view is somewhat conjectural, 
the best indications point that way. The writers 
were certainly different, for one is represented as 
being in heaven during the running of his vision 
(Rev. iv., I, 2), while the other was on earth 
(Rev. x., 1-4). One vision was based on the 
disclosures of a sealed book or roll (Rev. v., i); 
the other on an open book or roll (Rev. x., 8). 
For reasons already stated, I would assign the 
portion of the book already considered to a date 



204 Revelation 



subsequent to the general persecution under the 
Emperor Domitian, and quite near to the end of 
the first century. Chapter xi., however, was 
probably written prior to the destruction of 
Jerusalem, a.d. 70, for the temple is represented as 
still standing (verses 1,2). As above stated, I am 
strongly inclined to the view that the author of the 
previous chapters, finding an earlier apocalypse 
in existence of a like general trend — its author per- 
haps unknown — one that sufficiently suited his 
purpose, adopted portions of it, with perhaps some 
changes and corrections, including the insertion 
of chapter x., 7. And it suited his purpose partly 
perhaps because it announced the near coming of 
the end of all things (verse 6), as also the complete 
revelation or disclosure of the last of the divine 
mysteries; and if, as perhaps he reasonably might, 
he should understand that "Sodom and Egypt'* 
(Rev. xi., 8) — names highly obnoxious in Jewish 
thought — meant hated Rome, and that the 
earthquake of verse 13 meant its destruction, its 
general drift and meaning would lie along the 
lines of the visions he was then narrating. 

14. With the sounding of the seventh and last 
of the trumpets of vengeance, the Seer presents us 
(verses 15-19) a scene of ecstatic rejoicing in 
heaven over the complete establishment to all 
eternity of "the kingdom of oiu* Lord, and of his 
Christ" (verse 15), as also over the final triumph 
of divine wrath against the nations, and the 
immediate reward to "the prophets, and to the 



Revelation 205 



saints, and to them that fear thy name" (verse 
18). Obviously the full consummation was 
thought to be then very close at hand. The holy 
temple in Jerusalem, now lying in ruins for twenty 
years or more, was reopened in heaven; the old 
Mosaic ark of the covenant, probably lost when 
Nebuchadnezzar ravaged the city about six 
hundred years before, is refound; while the un- 
usual portents of nature indicate the coming of 
great events (verse 19). 

15. Apparently this particular drama ends at 
this point, and with chapter xii. we are introduced 
to another, the opening chapters of which are lost. 
But in what we have the writer turns back and 
begins again with an era of violent persecution and 
a persecution which, by historical allusions, is 
fairly well-identified with that of Nero, a.d. 64-68, 
which followed the burning of Rome, and a des- 
cription of which burning, it may be added, is 
probably reproduced in chapter xviii., 9-19. The 
dramatic form of representation previously used 
is still preserved. The same general subject is 
also adhered to — revenge on Rome (still desig- 
nated as Babylon) for the fearful persecutions 
inflicted on the saints, and a sketch or delineation 
of the final and glorious rewards of the latter in 
the New Jerusalem — -for the old Jerusalem was 
laid waste. 

16. As the introductory part of this added 
drama is lost (and of course previous historical 
allusions are lost with it), the historical meaning, 



2o6 Revelation 



if there be any, involved in the vision of the star- 
crowned and sun-clad woman (Rev. xii., i-6, 13- 
17), and in the vision of the war in heaven (verses 
7-12), must be matters of conjecture. None of 
the numerous commentaries that I have been 
able to consult give any explanation which I can 
regard as satisfactory. The proper interpretation 
of visions and dreams is a department of BibHcal 
criticism in which our BibHcal scholars have not 
yet attained to a very high state of proficiency. 
Hence, as to these two particular visions, I pass 
them by with only a comment or two. 

(i) Of the war in heaven the accoimt reads 
much as if Satan, up into the beginning oj the 
Christian era, still continued to have, and to 
exercise, as in the days of Job (Job i., 6), and as in 
the later time of Zechariah (Zech. iii., i, 2), a right 
or privilege of free entrance into the court of 
heaven, where he appears as ''accuser" of those 
who ''loved not their life even unto death, " which 
obviously means the redeemed martyrs ; but that at 
a time subsequent (not prior, as generally believed) 
to the sacrifice on Calvary, he and his angels were 
expelled thence and "cast down to the earth" 
where, on accoimt of his "great wrath," and 
because he had but a "short time" in which to 
work before the anticipated early return of Jesus 
the Master, it was evidently expected that he 
would play havoc, probably as the instigator of 
renewed and more virulent persecution against 
the saints of the Most High. How much of this 



Revelation 207 



is figurative, and, if figurative, what it means; 
how much, if any, is historical, and how or when 
fulfilled, the record does not disclose. If historical 
it is widely at variance with the views generally 
taught in our church as to the time when Satan was 
expelled from heaven. But be this as it mdcy, the 
song of triumph (Rev. xii., 10-12) over the defeat 
and expulsion of Satan is worthy the occasion. 
In the working out of the plan of redemption, this 
event was evidently thought to be ''the beginning 
of the end, " or at least the first of the victories that 
were to bring it about. 

(2) The apocalypse of the woman whom all 
nature delighted to honor (verses 1-6, 13-17), 
and in whose child were centered the hopes of 
humanity for its final redemption, introduces a 
repulsive dragon as the chief source or agency of 
persecution. Its heads, horns, and diadems (verse 
3) seem to associate it closely in the thought of the 
Seer with the Caesarean line of emperors, of whom 
Nero was the last and the worst. It is generally 
conceded, and apparently for good reasons, that in 
chapter xiii., we have a sketch of the Emperor Nero 
as "a beast" (which he undoubtedly was), and of 
some one of the obsequious ministers of his beastly 
passions, who therefore was "another beast," and 
also of the cruelties and barbarities of the Neronian 
persecution of a.d. 64-68. To have named Nero 
in that connection would have been treasonable, 
and therefore to the writer fatal, for the Roman 
sword (gladius), though short, could reach to the 



2o8 Revelation 



utmost limits of the empire. But a secret key 
(verse i8) sufficiently identified him to Christian 
readers, and the mere use of the words "dragon" 
and ''beast" by the writer (evidently a Jew by 
descent and early training) indicates an overpower- 
ing execration with which the surviving Christians 
invested the memory of their persecutors, and is a 
corresponding index to the awfulness of the perse- 
cutions. In Jewish thought the names of animals 
regarded as unclean expressed the acme of oppro- 
brium and hate (Matt, vii., 6; xv., 26). That in 
this particular case the names were deserved 
fully appears from the fragmentary remains of the 
history of that period. At that time, as ftdly as 
ever afterward, was probably exemplified ''the pa- 
tience and the faith of the saints" (Rev. xiii., 10). 

17. In chapter xiv., 1-7, the Seer seems to be 
setting forth, perhaps for the consolation and 
encouragement of the persecuted saints, his 
conception of Mount Zion, the home of the re- 
deemed martyrs — ^in substance about as follows: 

(i) A sacred number, say seven or twelve, 
multiplied by itself, with an added cipher or two, 
expressed in Jewish thought that which was endless 
or practically infinite (Matt, xviii., 22). Here 
three ciphers added to the product gave a faint 
expression of the number of the redeemed — a 
number so great that the chorus of their voices in 
song had a grandeur and power not unlike that of 
the most sublime of nature's manifestations 
(Rev. xiv., I, 2). 



Revelation 209 



(2) The music of the next world will be some- 
thing entirely new, and also something beyond 
human comprehension (verse 3). 

(3) Our Saviour's statement as to the absence 
of sexual life and relations in the next world (Luke 
XX., 35, 36) will be literally verified (Rev. xiv., 4). 

(4) The universal curse of human lying will 
not be found there, and no ''blemish" will exist 
(verse 5) — the force and significance of this last 
fact resting on the other fact that, by a ''blemish" 
of any kind, both animals and men were, in the 
thought of that day, rendered unfit for the service 
of the Most High (Lev. i., 3; xxi., 21). 

(5) Another gospel will then be promulgated, 
but what it will consist of, or how it will differ 
from our present gospel, is not stated (Rev. xiv., 
6). 

18. But during this time Babylon (or Rome), 
"the dragon," had not been forgotten; nor had 
Nero, "the beast." The depth and severity of 
the vengeance yet to be taken on them, and now 
prophetically announced (verses 8-12), were some- 
thing appalling; for they were to be compelled to 
"drink of the wine of the wrath of God, undiluted, 
in the cup of His anger . . . and the smoke of 
their torment goeth up for ever and ever" (verses 
10, 11). If hell contains any doom more terrible 
than that, it is not recorded. The agonizing 
prayer of the martyrs (Rev. vi., 10) was now heard, 
and assurances were given of frightful vengeance. 
But as the Neronian period of martyrdom was 



210 Revelation 



not yet ended, the Seer was directed to write of 
those who were yet to suffer (Rev. xiv., 13): 

"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from 
henceforth: 

''Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from 
their labors; 

"For their works follow with them. " 

19. The vision of the reaping of the earth 
(verses 14-20) presents no facts which I am able 
to render into actual history. Apparently it is 
prophetic of a final harvest, but it is a harvest of 
evil and not of good. The entire fruits of the 
reaping are represented as cast "into the great 
winepress of the wrath of God" (verse 19). 
Nothing is gathered into life eternal. This cer- 
tainly is not the reaping our Saviour told of in 
Matthew xiii., 37-43, nor do I know of any other 
reaping prophetically foretold to which it can 
properly be referred. The accoimt clearly in- 
volves, however, that which is the dominant 
thought of the book, vengeance without mercy. 

20. In the progressive development of the pre- 
sent drama, the time had now come for the 
avenging of the wrongs inflicted by Nero, "the 
beast" (Rev. xv., 2), on the martyred saints. 
The "seven angels having the seven last plagues, " 
which seem to be the perfected or completed 
expression of "the wrath of God," make their 
appearance (verse i). Face to face with the 
impending retribution, and notwithstanding its 
obvious horrors, the martyred victims of Nero's 



Revelation 211 



brutality are again represented as joining in a 
holy song of devout praise (verses 3, 4). Here, 
as in the drama of the earlier chapters, the aveng- 
ing spirit of ancient Judaism — the blood-revenge 
of the desert — runs riotous in ecstatic anticipation 
of the awful vengeance that was in store for the 
persecuting Gentiles. Even the sanctuary of the 
divine presence could not, as the vision represents, 
be cleared of the visible and stifling indications of 
His anger till the angelic ministers of His wrath 
had fully accomplished their ghastly work (verse 
8). 

If John the Apostle wrote all this, then we must 
conclude that when he did so he laid aside the 
spirit of benignant gentleness and love which 
belongs to the fourth Gospel and to the three 
epistles that bear his name, and that he resumed 
for the time being those belligerent traits of his 
early manhood which gave him the name of 
Boanerges — "Son of Thunder" — (Mark iii., 17), 
and which once prompted him to invoke fire from 
heaven to avenge a personal discourtesy (Luke ix., 
54). While his authorship cannot be authorita- 
tively denied, we can safely say that the spirit and 
tone of the passages we are now considering do not 
tally with what we otherwise know of him in his 
later years. 

21. The earnest longing of the martyrs for 
revenge must have been fully satisfied if the vision 
of the seven bowls (Rev. xvi.) possesses a historical 
significance at all commensurate with what is 



212 Revelation 



delineated. In fact, we may reasonably conclude 
that such was the verdict, for along with the por- 
tentous convulsions of nature which followed the 
pouring of the seventh and last bowl, what hap- 
pened to imperial Rome is thus recorded (verse 19) : 

** Babylon the great was remembered in the 
sight of God, to give unto her the cup of the wine 
of the fierceness of His wrath. " 

Nero's martyrs were avenged at last. 

But not even yet, in this wonderful drama, had 
the writer given what he regarded as an adequate 
expression of the old Christian hatred of Rome. 
He gives it, however, in chapters xvii., xviii. 
Nowhere in literature, ancient or modem, so far 
as my reading has gone, is there any sketch or 
setting forth of malignant but ecstatic antipathy 
such as is embodied in the vision of these two 
chapters. No dramatic writer of any age or race 
has come within a thousand miles of it in respect 
of the vigor of thought, sublimity of feeling, and 
beauty of expression with which the writer has 
here set forth, in a single picture, the acme or 
perfection of rancorous hate, and self-satisfied 
joy. In this respect it stands easily first in the 
annals of literature, whether sacred or profane. 

22. Responsive to the scene of this dire retri- 
bution, the powers of heaven, with the saints and 
martyrs, break out in a responsive litany of 
triumphant rejoicing, united with devout adora- 
tion and praise to Him who had done it all (Rev. 
xix., I- 10). The reader will look in vain here or 



Revelation 213 



elsewhere in the book for the expression, or even a 
hint, of sorrow or regret. 

Evidently it was not written for any such pur- 
pose. A spirit of unrelenting and unforgiving 
revenge, either anticipated or executed or in 
progress of execution, finds expression in every 
chapter and on every page. No tinge of remorse 
anywhere appears. If any mercy whatever, or any 
mitigation of suffering, was felt or shovtn either to 
the ignorant or to the innocent, the writer failed 
to put it down. This fact may, however, justify 
the suggestion that (contrary to the view generally 
entertained) the writer was not writing history, 
knew he was not, and consequently did not try to 
do so, but rather was writing the earliest Christian 
tragedy now extant, and one which might fairly 
be entitled ''The Tragedy of Persecution.'' And 
if it were so entitled, I think that our Biblical 
scholars would have much less trouble in getting 
at a correct understanding of its meaning. 

23. One other thought may here be in place. 
The prevalent tone of the book indicates clearly 
the vigor and virility of the church at the close of 
the apostolic era. Even amid the in tensest horrors 
of persecution, there is no hint or suggestion of a 
"let-down" in respect of any of its claims, pre- 
tensions, or hopes. As between the church and 
the empire, it was a fight even unto death. There 
was no flagging in its energies; no weakening in 
respect of their use; no cowardice on the part of 
either its leaders or their followers in the day of 



214 Revelation 



battle. In maintaining its right to live and 
develop along its own chosen line of growth, the 
church, as here sketched, was fierce, vigorous, and 
unrelenting. The determined spirit of Richelieu 
dwelt in it, for it knew ''no such word as fail." 
If, on the other hand, the gentle spirit of the 
Prince of Peace was then temporarily absent, we 
may safely conclude that the extreme exigencies 
of the times demanded it. It was then a church 
miHtant in every sense of the word ; and in respect 
of this particular contest, it became the church 
triumphant. Living now in the "piping times of 
peace, " it is not for us to say aught in disparage- 
ment of the writer or of the record, for in the 
calamitous experiences of that era of persecution, 
the divinely appointed rule was established that 
*'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
church." 



A FUTURE LIFE 

So far as existing records go, the ideas enter- 
tained by the Hebrew people relative to a future 
state, say up to about the time of the Babylonian 
captivity (sixth century B.C.), were exceedingly 
crude. The spirits of the dead, good and bad 
alike and together, were believed to continue a 
semi-conscious, comatose, or sleepy sort of an 
existence, in a pit or cave somewhere down in the 
bowels of the earth, then known as Sheol. It was 
from such a sleep and such a cave that the prophet 
Samuel was ''disquieted," with some apparent 
irritability on his part, when he came ''up out of 
the earth" under the divination of the witch of 
Endor (I. Sam. xxviii., 13, 15). It was while in 
such a cave that the spirits of the deceased kings 
and heroes of history were aroused to give a 
derisive welcome to the newly-arrived ghost of the 
mighty Nebuchadnezzar of imperial Babylon 
(Isa. xiv., 9-17). Life in Sheol contained nothing 
pleasant to look forward to ; nor in the writings of 
that period do we find any mention of a way of 
escape (Ps. vi., 5; Eccl. ix., 10). A dull, inactive, 
and apparently unending existence in the cave or 
pit, Sheol, was the best that the people of ancient 

215 



2i6 A Future Life 

Israel then held in expectation. If Psalms xvi., 
10 be a product of David's pen (which is doubtful), 
we must conclude that his prophetic eye took in 
more than elsewhere appears as the beHef of his 
day. 

But in the course of time (seventh centiuy B.C.) 
it was made known, probably by revelation, that 
for the sons of Israel (to no others is it promised) 
there would be a deliverance from the dark cave of 
Sheol ; and this is the first hint we have of a separa- 
tion in a future state between the righteous and 
the wicked. Our record herein is found in Hosea 
xiii., 14. However, as nothing to the like effect 
is found in the authentic writings of Hosea' s 
contemporaries, Isaiah and Amos, it seems fair 
to infer that this new revelation did not at once 
become a part of the faith of the Jewish church. 
But it is possible that the germinal seed of divine 
truth thus planted by Hosea gradually grew in 
the minds of the leaders of religious thought until, 
about one hundred and fifty years later, it blos- 
somed into the incipient doctrine of the resur- 
rection from the dead, as first appears in Ezekiel 
xxxvii., 12, 13. But even then, only the resurrec- 
tion of Jehovah's people, the loyal sons of Israel, 
is promised. Apparently the final destiny of the 
remaining dead did not come within the scope of 
the prophet's vision. Or, possibly, in his view, 
Sheol was good enough for them, and he let them 
stay there. The Jews never had any particular 
love for the Gentiles, either dead or alive. 



A Future Life 217 



In stating my views as above, I have not over- 
looked Isaiah xxvi., 14, 19, but I think it quite 
clear that this old "song" (verse i) belongs to a 
much later period, say to the time when the des- 
truction of Jerusalem was close at hand, as indica- 
tedin chapter xxiv. If I am right in so concluding, 
the writer of this song was a contemporary of 
Ezekiel, and represents the same state of religious 
thought. 

As to the successive steps in the growth or 
development of this doctrine of the resurrection — 
that is, during the next two hundred years or 
thereabout — we have no knowledge whatever, 
but at about the end of that period we have the 
record foimd in Daniel xii., 2, 3, which probably 
represents the high-water mark of Jewish belief 
on this subject nearly, if not quite, up to the begin- 
ning of the Christian era. Of this justly cele- 
brated passage, the following points may profitably 
be noted: 

1. It relates only to the Jewish people (Dan. 
xii., i). No others come within the range or scope 
of the prophet's vision; hence he gives us no infor- 
mation whatever as to the final destiny of the 
non- Jewish dead. If they, or any of them, were 
to be raised, or delivered from Sheol, by resurrec- 
tion or otherwise, the prophet did not know it. 

2. Limited thus, as the vision was, to the 
Jewish people, it is singular at least that the 
prophet uses the word "many" (verse 2) and not 
"all" in designating those who "shall awake." 



2i8 A Future Life 

Possibly as he was speaking especially of some 
''time of trouble, such as never was," etc. (verse 
i), he had in mind only those who were victims of, 
or participated in, the events of that "time." 
Some of them had been faithful, and for such an 
* ' everlasting life ' ' was predicted (verse 3) , Others, 
however — ^in the troublous times that characterized 
the later history of the Jewish people there were 
many such — were faithless and disloyal; and for 
these the prophet entertained only a feeling of 
"shame and everlasting contempt" (verse 2). 

3. The separation of those who "shall awake" 
into two easily distinguished classes is a marked 
feature of this prophecy. Nor can any question 
be raised as to the justice and reasonableness of 
the separation. We shall find as we progress that 
this division and separation become more pro- 
nounced under later revelations. 

4. If the prophet had any special knowledge 
of a heaven or a hell, the record he made fails to 
indicate it. The inference appears to be unavoid- 
able that nothing of either was known at that time. 
Everything which he predicts might just as well 
belong to this side of Jordan as to the other. 

Little is known as to the growth of religious 
thought for the next three hundred years, or to 
the opening of the Christian era, but at this latter 
epoch, the current popular belief can be gathered 
from our Gospel records, and largely from the 
parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke xvi., 
19-31). 



A Future Life 219 

1. The separation into two classes was made 
at death, or immediately after. Apparently each 
disembodied spirit naturally went its appointed 
way, though Lazarus was specially honored with 
an angelic escort. For the purposes of this division 
and separation, a resurrection was not thought 
to be necessary. 

2. The distance apart of the two classes in 
their new homes, though said to be ''far," was 
not at that time thought to be so great as in our 
modem theology. Not only was each within the 
range of vision of the other, but they were believed 
to be so near together that the intelligible trans- 
mission of human thought or ideas was perfectly 
feasible. In other words, the nearness of the two 
localities, and the intervening conditions, were 
such that the occupants of each could actually see 
the conditions and surroundings of the occupants 
of the other, and intelHgible conversation between 
them was regarded as involving no matter of 
difficulty or surprise. 

3. Still ftuther, it was believed that the occu- 
pants of the higher or better place could, for 
temporary purposes, pass over to and visit the 
other. 

This, however, was an error which our Saviour 
at once corrected by telling his hearers : 

4. That between these two localities there was 
"a great gulf fixed, " of such kind or extent that it 
was impassable in either direction, at least to the 
spirits of the dead. Obviously, in His view the 



220 A Future Life 



occupants of the one had no occasion to interest 
themselves in the affairs of the other. 

Thus the final and complete separation of the 
saved and the lost was definitely made known as 
an element of our religious faith, and as such, so 
far as we can gather from existing records, it was 
then revealed for the first time. 

5. It was also then believed that the occupants 
of this higher and better world could be sent on 
beneficent errands to, and could hold intelligible 
and profitable intercourse with, the living inhabi- 
tants of the earth. This is nowhere denied in the 
New Testament, and from Hebrews i., 14 I should 
infer that it was a well-recognized part of the be- 
lief of the church in the apostolic era of its history 
— a belief which, unforttmately, has been lost. 

By this time the Hebrew Sheol, or Greek Hades, 
had come to be regarded as the abode, not of all 
the dead, but only of the reprobate class, and from 
being a place of semi-oblivion, it had come to be 
regarded as a place of torment, and the particular 
form of torment was that of fire. 

6. Heaven was thought of as the home of their 
great progenitor Abraham. To be received in his 
bosom implied a cordial and sincere welcome, as to 
"a feast of fat things. " 

From other sources we learn that many of the 
Jewish people, and probably a majority, believed 
at that time in a Jewish resurrection at the "last 
day" (John xi., 24); but it does not appear that 
they had any well-defined expectation of a general 



A Future Life 221 



resurrection, such as would include the Gentile 
dead. In fact, the Jews of that day had no interest 
in the Gentiles, either in this world or in the next. 

There are a few passages in the Psalms (as xvii., 
15; xlix., 15, etc.) which indicate that the writer 
thereof entertained an expectation, or at least a 
hope, of deliverance from Sheol for himself, and 
presumptively for all the loyal and devout follow- 
ers of Jehovah ; but as neither the dates nor the au- 
thorship of these psalms can now be determined, 
they give us no material aid in our present in- 
quiry. At best, they indicate no advance over the 
prophecies of Ezekiel and Daniel already quoted. 

Nor does the justly celebrated passage Job 
xiv., 13, 14 aid us materially, for as our scholars 
tell us, the original Hebrew text here is in hopeless 
confusion, nor do we know the date of its author- 
ship. On linguistic grounds, our best scholars 
are now inclined to assign it to a comparatively 
late date. 

Thus it will be seen that up to the time of Jesus 
of Nazareth the doctrine of a future state was but 
crudely developed in the Jewish church. A resur- 
rection at the last day was believed in, but it was 
Hmited to the Jewish people. As to them, there 
would be a division or separation of the good from 
the bad ; the good would be welcomed to Abraham's 
bosom; the bad would be tormented in Hades. 
As to what they then thought heaven would be, 
we have no further knowledge of a reliable charac- 
ter, except such as we may gather from Psalms 



222 A Future Life 

xvi., 10, II and Ixxiii., 25, where life in the presence 
of Jehovah was looked forward to with evident 
delight. But as to the date of these, as of the 
other psalms referred to, we only know that they 
were parts of the hymn-book of the Jewish church 
at and for some unknown time prior to the begin- 
ning of the Christian era, but which certainly was 
compiled, in its present form, subsequently to the 
return from the captivity. 

This brings us to the later and what we may 
regard as the authoritative, complete, and final 
revelation as made by Jesus of Nazareth. 

I. He put this present life in a new relationship 
to the future state; that is, heaven was not made 
for the sake of the earth, but the earth was made 
in order that its inhabitants might, by and while 
living on the earth, be prepared or made ready for 
heaven. This new relationship lies at the basis of 
much of His teaching, as, for example: "Lay up 
for yourselves treasures in heaven" (Matt, vi., 
20); "Strive to enter in by the narrow door" 
(Luke xiii., 24); "Make to yourselves friends by 
means of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, 
when it shall fail, they may receive you into the 
eternal tabernacles" (Luke xvi., 9); etc. The 
parable of the talents (Matt, xxv., 14-30) has 
this for its setting ; so also the laborers in the vine- 
yard (Matt. XX., 1-16); and the wedding garment 
(Matt, xxii., 1-14). The dominant tone and drift 
of our vSaviour's teachings point as rigidly and 
unerringly as the finger of a guide-board in the 



A Future Life 223 

direction of another world. Accordingly, as 
taught by Him, life here is to be organized and run, 
not with reference to results thought by each 
individual to be most agreeable to himself just 
here and just now, but rather with reference to 
results that will best fit and qualify him, or get 
him ready, for another life in a future state — a 
life which, lasting eternally, will last for an awfully 
long time! Briefly, a man is to live here in such a 
way as will best prepare him, not merely to live 
hereafter, but to live in that hereafter, in its 
stuTOundings, whatever they may be, and to do 
this forever. Such, clearly, according to Jesus of 
Nazareth, was the divine purpose in our creation. 
But that hereafter — the future state — is of a 
particular kind. Certain qualities are necessary 
for admission thereinto, qualities specifically 
enumerated in Matthew v., 3-9. How these 
qualities are to be acqmred is also made known: 
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
mind" . . . [and] *'thy neighbor as thyself" 
(Matt, xxii., 37-39). 

It is safe to say that they who sincerely and 
faithfully endeavor to make such a preparation 
in this life, will not be kept waiting long at the 
gates of the New Jerusalem. 

2. Jesus of Nazareth, however, tells us prac- 
tically nothing of what or where heaven is, or 
what His devout followers will have to do when 
they get there. Perhaps because of our own 



224 A Future Life 

limitations it was impossible for Him to give us 
any realizing apprehension of the actual facts. 
Such seems to have been Paul's imderstanding 
after he had been there and returned, for in sub- 
stance he says that, as to what he saw, he could not 
tell us if he would, and would not if he could 
(I. Cor. ii., 9; 11. Cor. xii., 4). We only know that 
somewhere between this life and the next from 
these bodies of ours will be eliminated the only 
elements for which they can now be said to exist : 
(i) the preservation of physical life by use of food 
(Rev. vii., 16), and (2) sexual reproduction (Matt. 
xxii., 30). What our bodies will consist of when 
these elements are gone, we do not know. But we 
may safely infer from the data thus given that 
heaven will be supremely adapted to the most 
enjoyable use and exercise of such bodies as we 
shall then have, and of such mental and spiritual 
excellences as in our preparations here we may 
have acquired; and all this will be in the presence 
and fellowship, and with the approval and benedic- 
tion, of our Master and King, and this for a time 
the end of which was not within the range of 
prophetic vision. Further than this oiu* knowledge 
does not go. 

It is true that the writer of Revelation, apparent- 
ly in order to stimulate and encoin-age the growth 
of a high spiritual life among those whom he 
addressed, endeavored to give them some idea 
of heaven, but obviously the only way he could do 
so was to represent it as being made up of the best 



A Future Life 225 

things then known, or at that time within human 
comprehension. Accordingly, he told them of 
white robes, royal crowns, harps, music, a wedding 
feast, a temple more gorgeous than Solomon's, 
lighted not by the sun, nor by the holy oil-lamps 
of their earthly sanctuary, but by the actual 
presence of the great Jehovah himself. He told 
of a city, of a river flowing through it, of shade- 
trees on its banks, of golden streets and lofty 
walls and pearly gates, all of which would strongly 
appeal to the vivid imagination of the Semitic 
people. 

Through a blind sort of unhealthy pietism, a 
large section of the Holy Catholic Church has 
drifted, not into regarding all this as literally true, 
but into reading it and thinking and talking about 
it as if it were true; so that these ideas have 
largely covered Christian thought through all the 
intervening centinies. But these, the best elements 
of the best life and civilization of the first century, 
cut but a small figtire in comparison with the 
Anglo-Saxon life and civilization of the twentieth 
century. The things thus enumerated — white 
robes, crowns, harps, etc. — appeal but feebly 
to the average man of the present day, compared 
with the comforts and luxuries of our present 
civilization. And if these are literally the best 
things that heaven has to offer, many of us would 
rather stay here. Consequently the desire to go 
to heaven has lost much of its intended power as a 
stimulus to pure and holy living. 



226 A Future Life 



Now, I do not here propose to set forth my 
feeble surmise of some few things that clearly 
seem to me to belong to the final destiny of a 
redeemed humanity; but I feel safe in asking: 
Can it be that a heaven of harps and pearly gates 
and golden streets constitutes an adequate repay- 
ment or return for the thousands of years of labor 
and toil and suffering and agony of the millions 
of humanity that have gone, that are here, and are 
yet to come? for the wars that have devastated 
nations? for the earthquakes, famines, and pesti- 
lences that have afflicted our race? for the wrongs 
and outrages of brutality, lust, pride, passion, and 
violence? for the miseries of the poor, the imfortu- 
nate and needy? Yea, more: Was not the price 
paid on Calvary a price infinitely too high, if its 
purpose was only to redeem otu comparatively 
worthless humanity unto a Hfe and destiny such as 
filled the narrow conceptions of Jewish prophecy? 

As I look at it, our church needs to revise or 
newly define its teachings about heaven and a 
future state. Unless heaven is or contains some- 
thing the attainment of which shall be an adequate 
return for its cost, the first step in the mystery of 
the universe will not be solved. I believe, how- 
ever, that it does; and I so read the teachings of 
Jesus and Paul, both of whom had been there, 
and knew what they were talking about. 

If we cannot believe them, we can believe 
nobody. 

3. If, as above suggested, it be the divine 



A Future Lite 227 



purpose that this world should be a place of pre- 
paration, or a training-school in and by which to 
prepare humanity for another and a different 
world and for another and different life, then 
naturally we should expect, as in substance is 
promised, that those who have been diligent 
students in this school — and the more diligent the 
better — would be selected as the most fit persons 
to participate in and do the work of such other 
life ; for they alone would be qualified. Only of 
them could it be said that they had conformed to 
the piu-pose of their creation. The rest would 
nattirally be accounted failiures, and, like all other 
failures, their proper place would be in the moral 
dumping-ground, or waste-heap, or scrap-pile of 
the universe. So far as our records show, God has 
no place nor use for those members of the human 
family who refuse or neglect to prepare themselves 
as prescribed. Such preparation, and that only, 
is what they are here for. 

Regarding the final destiny of such as are failures, 
the New Testament presents two or three different 
views, not necessarily conflicting, for in the in- 
tended meaning of each, all are undoubtedly true. 

(i) According to one view, the members of 
humanity last referred to were culled out, rejected, 
and thrown away, and nothing further was known 
in reference to them. For the purposes of the 
narrative, they passed out of sight and considera- 
tion and into oblivion. For this we have the 
authority of Matthew viii., 12; xiii., 48; xxii., 13; 



228 A Future Life 

XXV., 12, 30; Mark viii., 36, 37; Luke xiii., 6-9, 28; 
xiv., 24; xvii., 34, 35; etc. 

This also is the extent of Paxil's revelation on 
this subject (I. Cor. ix., 2']')', and perhaps this was 
all that he felt called upon to say, for evidently 
in his view this was enough. 

(2) A further phase of the subject is presented 
in many passages to the effect that this, the 
rejected and waste material of our present moral 
system, will be thrown into the dumping-groimd 
of Gehenna; for such was the Jewish Gehenna, a 
dumping-ground for the refuse and offal of the 
city of Jerusalem. Such a view is all that we can 
fairly infer from such passages as Matthew v., 
22, 29, 30; X., 28; xviii., 9; xxiii., 15, 33; Mark ix., 
43, 45, 47; Luke xii., 5; etc. 

In some of these passages the awfulness of such 
a fate is enhanced by a reference to the fires of the 
Jewish Gehenna, which were always kept burning 
for the purposes of sanitation. 

(3) In a series of allied passages this morally 
waste material is figuratively represented as 
destroyed or consumed, generally by fire, as in 
Matthew iii., 12; vi., 30; vii., 19; x., 28; xiii., 30; 
xxi., 41; Mark, xii., 9; Luke xix., 27; xx., 16; etc. 

In still other passages the active infliction of a 
terrible punishment is set forth as awaiting those 
who have refused or neglected to make the required 
preparation; though usually (but not always) 
the denunciation of such a punishment is associ- 
ated with some manifestation of active wickedness. 



I 



A Future Life 229 

And if the punishment so denounced was to have 
any end or cessation, the prophetic eye failed or 
was unable to see it. (Matt, xii., 32; xiii., 41, 42, 
50; xviii., 34; XXV., 41, 46; Mark iii., 28; etc.) 

It is a singular fact that Matthew makes more 
allusions to a future state of retribution than are 
to be found in all the other Gospels and in the 
epistles. I do not know of any reason why this 
should be so. 

The different views above noted, as to the final 
destiny of the lost, might suggest the possibility 
that in the future world there may be different 
degrees of punishment. So, too, as respects the 
final destiny of the righteous, it may be possible 
that some will receive a higher reward than others. 
The parable of the ten pounds (Luke xix., 11-25) 
looks very much that way; though the parable of 
the laborers in the vineyard (Matt, xx., 1-16) ap- 
pears to have an opposite meaning. As to both 
these matters, I think we must await further light; 
but while doing so, we may safely rest in the certain 
conviction that the reward of the righteous will 
be more than ample, and that the punishment of 
the wicked will not exceed their just deserts. 
*' Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" 

But I take no more stock in a hell of fire and 
brimstone than I do in a heaven of harps and 
pearly gates. All such illustrations are purely 
figurative, though undoubtedly they have a 
meaning, and a meaning of fearful import to us. 
As the descriptions of heaven were made up of the 



230 A Future Life 



best things that a Jew of the first century knew 
anything about, so the New Testament descrip- 
tions of hell are made up of the worst. The 
Gehenna of Jerusalem was regarded as foul — 
impure and corrupt — and repulsively so, up to the 
highest height of Jewish conception. As a recep- 
tacle for the city refuse and offal, it was as impure 
as a modern cesspool or an unfiushed sewer. The 
festering worm of its rottenness made it so abhor- 
rent that nothing but the ever-during fires that 
were kept could mitigate its disgusting vileness. 
Our modem civilization contains much that a 
Jewish Pharisee of the first centtiry would have 
abominated as simply nasty. Herein the modem 
Jew is somewhat of a degenerate; but the high- 
caste Brahman of India still retains the old ideas 
and practices of personal purity. To him many 
things in western civilization are unutterably vile 
and repulsive. Until our pure religion brings us up 
to a higher standard of personal and social ptuity, 
even divine grace will have uphill work in the 
conversion of the high-caste Brahmans, living, as 
they do, in a pride of purity which we neither 
attain unto nor even seek after. 



SATAN 

I WAS once asked by a lay churchman: "Do 
you believe in a personal Satan?" 

I replied that I had no well-settled belief either 
way ; in short, that I did not know. 

In the New Testament, Satan is clearly and un- 
doubtedly and uniformly referred to and spoken of 
as if he were a person with a distinct personality 
of his own, and with all the qualities and 
attributes of personality, including individuality, 
volition, and responsibility. I was brought up so to 
believe, and such, as I understand it, is the view 
generally held to-day by all, or practically all, the 
orthodox branches of the Christian church. Fur- 
thermore, it is held that he is, and ever since the 
human race appeared on the earth has been, the 
open and avowed enemy of God and man, hostile 
to all the true interests of both, and malignant and 
unrelenting in his hostility. 

Now, all this may be true, nor do I deny or 
dispute it; but: 

I. According to the generally accepted belief, 
Satan, as a person, must possess all the attributes 
of God himself except two — omnipotence and love. 
That is to say, he is, according to current teachings, 

231 



232 Satan 

omnipresent, for he exists everywhere, at least on 
earth, and omniscient, for he knows everything, 
even to the most secret thoughts of everybody. 

Besides this, he is believed to possess and 
exercise the same kind and degree of capa- 
bility for entering into the minds and hearts of 
men as is possessed by the Holy Spirit, the third 
person of the Trinity, and also a greater power 
over them. And this takes in a pretty large part 
of what we call omnipotence. 

Now, the idea that a personal being, thoroughly 
malignant in character, and who, at least in his 
relation to us, possesses more than one half of the 
attributes of God himself — that such a being 
should be a constituent part of God's moral imi- 
verse, is something which I cannot imderstand. 
It may be true, but it passes my comprehension. 

2. Another singular fact : At the time the Book 
of Job was written (though I do not know when it 
was), and according to the conception of Satan 
that then existed, he did not possess a single one 
of the attributes which we now ascribe to him. 
As sketched in Job (chapters i., ii.), Satan was not 
at that time regarded as either omniscient or 
omnipotent, nor yet as omnipresent; nor was he 
a malignant being. In fact, he entertained no 
special hostility toward God or man. He came 
into the council-chamber of Jehovah, just as if he 
had a right to be there, nor is he represented as an 
unwelcome guest. He had been sauntering up and 
down the earth — or so he said — much as if he had 



Satan 233 

nothing else to do, or as if that were a pleasant 
way of putting in the time. No act or intent of 
evil toward any one is charged against him. He 
saw Job, and saw how upright and prosperous he 
was, as well he might be, for he was the especial 
object of divine favor. According to this sketch, 
Satan was a sort of cynical character, but not 
malignant. He had no particular hostility toward 
Job, but he thought that Job was good simply 
because it paid him to be good. 

Obviously, the Satan of Job and the Satan of the 
New Testament have little, if anything, in common 
except the name. 

3. There is another fact which I cannot over- 
look, but just how much weight it should have in 
the argument, I do not know. Through a vivid- 
ness of imagination almost incomprehensible to us 
matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxons, the Hebrew race had 
as one of its characteristics a marked tendency 
to personify agencies and forces that were not 
understood, and to illustrate which we need not go 
outside the writings of St. Paul, for he was much 
given to this practice. In I. Corinthians xv., 54, 
55, death is personified or spoken of as if it were 
a person, and as perfectly as Satan ever was. 

Now I can conceive it as possible (though I do 
not say it is true) that "Satan " is, in Biblical usage, 
a personified name for a condition of things, and a 
condition of things that stands in close relationship 
to another condition of things generally known as 
"sin," the difference between the two words, as 



234 Satan 

thus regarded, being substantially this : that while 
'*sin" generally refers to, or has to do objectively 
with, the individual man as a sinner, the name 
''Satan" includes more particularly the subjective 
agencies and forces that tend to make him such. 
And while this, perhaps, is not theologically exact, 
it is near enough so for my present purpose. 

4. Another fact : Neither the Hebrew nor the 
Greek language (nor the EngHsh, for that matter) 
had any one word that expressed, or could be made 
to express, the two ideas of the agency, force, or 
influence which, acting on the man, makes him a 
sinner, and the resultant effect in the man and in 
his life — the effect that we call ''sin. " To express 
the first of these two ideas, as distinguished from 
the second, the Hebrew adopted the word "Satan," 
which, our scholars tell us, means an "adversary" ; 
and the use of this word for the expression of that 
idea became so universal that it was carried for- 
ward into the New Testament. The latter of the 
two ideas above noted is, of course, sufficiently 
expressed by the word "sin." 

5. I think it at least reasonably clear: 

(i) That at some very .ancient but now un- 
known period of time, there existed in the old 
Hebrew faith a belief in the existence of a super- 
human person, then known by the name of 
"Satan." This seems to be a fair inference 
from the Book of Job, as noted above. 

(2) But as already explained in the same 
connection, this Satan of Job fell very far short of 



Satan 235 

being such a Satan as the New Testament writers 
had in mind. 

(3) By the time of the return from the Baby- 
lonian captivity (late in the sixth century B.C.), 
the Jewish satanic idea or conception had grown 
or developed until the name Satan stood for some 
person or personification who or which was re- 
garded as hostile to God and man — ;as appears 
in Zechariah (iii., i, 2), a prophet of the Return. 
The same also appears at about the same time in 
I. Chronicles xxi., i, for it is clear that the two 
books of Chronicles were not put into their present 
shape at a much (if any) earlier date, since they 
describe the beginning of the captivity (II. Chron. 
xxxvi., 17-21). 

Aside from these three citations there is no Old 
Testament mention of Satan, either as a person 
or as an impersonal power or influence in the world. 

(4) By the Jews in New Testament times, 
Satan was undoubtedly thought and spoken of as 
a person, but whether or not correctly so, is a 
question that I cannot answer. I cannot answer 
it, because I find that in respect of ideas and 
theories which were not esssential to His work, our 
Saviour occasionally assumed the truth of things 
that His hearers verily believed, but which, in the 
fuller knowledge of to-day, we know to be untrue. 
For example, when He cursed the barren fig-tree 
(Mark xi., 12-21), he assumed what everybody 
believed, that the tree had a volition of its own, 
and was at least partly responsible for its own 



236 Satan 

barrenness. So likewise in His works of healing 
He assumed the presence of demons, as was then 
the universal belief, in cases such as we now recog- 
nize as paralysis, epilepsy, or insanity. Errors of 
poptdar belief as to matters not essential to His 
mission, He usually ignored. 

Did this idea that Satan was a person come in 
that class? I do not know; nor, as I look at it, is 
it a matter of much consequence either way. As 
respects any interest of life here or hereafter, I 
fail to see that it makes any practical difference 
whether we regard Satan as an individual person or 
as an impersonal power, agency, or influence which 
acting on or in us, makes for wickedness. The 
result is identically the same in either case in so 
far as it affects us. The question involved is 
purely a question of dogma or doctrine, and is not 
one of practical righteousness. 

In saying that the writers of the New Testament 
regarded Satan as a person, I ought perhaps to 
make one exception. The author of the Epistle 
of James tells us that the power which in us makes 
for wickedness is human "lust" (Jas. i., 14, 15). 
The only passage in which he recognizes this power 
as extrahuman and personal is in chapter iv., 7, 
' * Resist the devil , ' ' etc. Can this mean that , in his 
apprehension, ''the devil" is but another name for 
* * lust ' ' ? Perhaps so ; perhaps not. 

The belief in a personal Satan probably arose 
out of an effort to account for the origin of evil 
in our world. At one time Jehovah was regarded 



Satan 237 

not only as the author of good, but of evil as well, 
the latter being the expression of His anger (II. 
Sam. xxiv., i). The author of Genesis took it to 
be one of a lower order of animals, a serpent. ^ 
As, in course of time, these theories were found to 
be untenable or unsatisfactory, some new one had 
to be devised. The responsibility for the intro- 
duction of evil into our world must be deposited 
somewhere — it did not make much difference 
where. The Satan of Job appears to have been a 
convenient personage, and the responsibility was 
accordingly shoved onto him. His name having 
thus become associated with evil, the association 

' There is an idea, which forms part of our general religious 
thinking, that Satan in the form of a serpent was really the 
tempter in Eden. Perhaps this is so, but we have no Scripture 
authority for it. The writer of Genesis clearly entertained no 
such conception. As already stated, the idea of Satan did not 
then exist in Hebrew thought; and, what perhaps is equally to 
the point, the curse pronounced on the tempter, "upon thy belly 
shalt thou go," etc. (Gen. iii., 14) applies exactly to a serpent, 
and does not apply to any such personaHty as Satan is now 
represented to be. Nor does any subsequent Biblical writer, 
either directly or by implication, associate Satan with the Edenic 
temptation. Paul is careful not to do so (II. Cor. xi., 3). The 
passage that comes nearest to such association is Revelation 
XX., 2, where Satan is called "the old serpent, " but this designa- 
tion does not identify him with serpents generally, nor with any 
particular serpent of Biblical history (there are several such; 
e.g., Genesis xlix., 17; Ex. iv., 3; Num. xxi., 9); and still less does 
it identify him with the serpent of the great temptation. The 
author of the Book of Revelation should not be charged with 
meaning something he did not say, especially in view of his own 
prohibition of a curse on him who should add anything to his 
record (Rev. xxii., 18). 



238 Satan 

grew and developed in popiilar thought until 
within a few centuries he came to be regarded as 
the incarnation of every form of evil, even to the 
extent of a malignant hostility to everything that 
was good. 

Thus far, I have assumed that the Satan of Job 
was an actual personage, but if I should ever come 
to know that he was purely an imaginary character, 
it would not surprise me in the least, nor make a 
particle of difference in my religious faith. The 
Book of Job is a drama both in form and in sub- 
stance, as would be perfectly obvious if it were 
divided up into acts and scenes and printed with 
the proper stage directions. It has been correctly 
termed the ''oldest drama in the world," and 
published in convenient form to be read as such. 
We cannot be certain that its subordinate dramatis 
personcB are other than imaginary. Satan, as a 
character in the drama, comes in this class. He 
may be a real personage or only a made-up charac- 
ter introduced for dramatic effect. If so, what is 
said of him proves nothing material to our present 
inquiry. 

Perhaps, after all, Satan is only a name for 
human ignorance, somewhat as we say the earth 
is held in its orbit by gravitation ; but what gravi- 
tation is, nobody knows. 

The personification, under specific names, of 
forces that we do not understand is not at all 
unusual even with ourselves. We still think and 
talk of an imaginary "Nemesis" who persistently 



Satan 239 

follows the invisible trail of the criminal and cannot 
be shaken off. We think and talk about one of 
the mysteries of our moral nature, which we name 
conscience, calling it ''dead," or "active," or 
"sensitive," just as if it were a person. Boreas, 
in our thought, personifies the violent tempest, and 
Neptune the chaotic sea. Such illustrations might 
be multiplied, but these will suffice. 
I close as I began: "I don't know." 
Which theory is right, is purely a matter of 
opinion, and, so far as I can see, it makes no prac- 
tical difference which theory any particular person 
may adopt — ^imless he be a theologian, and I do 
not belong in that class. 



SIN 



A CORRECT understanding of what sin is lies 
at the basis of a correct knowledge of Christianity ; 
or, in other words, no man knows what Christianity 
is — I mean the Christianity of the New Testament 
— until he first learns what sin is. 

The definition of sin contained in the Westmin- 
ster Shorter Catechism may be theologically 
correct, but practically (that is, to the moral 
consciousness of the generality of men) it is but 
little more than a meaningless collocation of 
words. It runs thus : 

*'Sin is a want of conformity unto or transgres- 
sion of the laws of God." (Ans. to Q. 14.) 

In my boyhood days children were required to 
memorize this definition, often before they knew 
how to read. And a great many otherwise very 
good men are still urging and insisting that this 
and more than a hundred other answers equally 
or still more abstruse, and to the comprehension 
of a child equally meaningless, shall be an essential 
part of a child's Sunday-school training. 

It would be much better, at least from a prac- 
tical standpoint, to say that sin is, or includes, 
anything and everything that is morally wrong 

240 



Sin 241 

or impure, morally injurious, or debasing, or 
defiling; just (for illustration) as a spatter of mud 
or filth of any kind will stain and defile a man's 
shirt-front, or a woman's white skirt, and thereby 
render the garment offensive to the sight and, un- 
til cleaned, imfit for use. Sin is moral dirt. 

When we learn to abhor sin as something that is 
morally defiling, just as we abhor a stained, mud- 
bespattered, filthy garment, and for the same reason 
— because it is defiled and defiling — we shall at 
least partially know and appreciate what Chris- 
tianity is as an agency for getting rid of sin. 

We shall then have a good start on the highroad 
to the millennium; for sin is the source and cause 
of all and every form of evil and suffering, physical, 
mental, and moral, to which humanity is now 
subject, and, so far as I know, it is the only fact or 
agency that stands in the way of the coming of the 
millennium. 

It is a noticeable fact that the original meaning 
of the Hebrew word ''Satan" is "one that stands 
in the way," hence an ''adversary." (I. Chron. 
xxi., I ; Zech. iii., i : R. V. marginal translation.) 

Sin, in its moral aspect, that is, as something 
morally defiling, is unknown in any heathen 
religion of which I have any knowledge. Bud- 
dhism, for example, knows nothing of sin, but seeks 
to reform the world by the avoidance of suffering. 
According to that system of belief, suffering comes 
from desire: the man who has the fewest desires 
is the happiest; hence suppression of desire leads 



242 Sin 

to happiness. When a man has suppressed or 
destroyed all feeling of desire, and has done it so 
completely that he is not conscious of wanting or 
desiring anything, his state or condition, involving 
physical deadness and mental vacuity to every- 
thing external to himself, is "Nirvana, " or heaven 
— a condition rather than a place. Thus sin is 
wholly ignored in the Buddhist faith. 

Our so-called Christian Science has a theory 
that (if I correctly understand it) makes sin to be 
an element of an imaginary or unreal develop- 
ment of the moral system in which we Hve ; hence 
sin is to be ignored as imaginary and unreal; so 
that the Christian Scientist, by growing up or 
training himself into a knowledge and practice 
of that only which is essentially good, will leave 
behind him that which is imaginary and unreal and 
sinful — vSomewhat, perhaps, as a skilled seaman 
will (if he can) sail out of a fog and leave it behind. 
It is then of no further interest to him. While he 
was in it, it obscured his vision, and furnished him 
no sailing-directions. To that extent, and for 
that reason, it was to him unreal. Sin and suffer- 
ing and disease are, in ^Christian Science, nothing 
but a moral fog-bank, to be gotten rid of by 
sailing out of it. 

Thus sin is practically ignored in the Christian 
Science system of belief. 

Chinese Confucianism, on the other hand, is 
directed primarily to the cultivation and practice 
of a highly developed moral code that is based on, 



Sin 243 

or begins with, the theory that evil and suffering 
result from a failure or neglect to maintain correct 
relations with one's surroundings or environment, 
including the natural laws imder which, we live. 
Consequently the maintenance of such correct 
relations in all the interests and ramifications of 
life, social, civil, and political, and also as regards 
the multitude of spirits, evil and good, that fill all 
space, is the means of avoiding evil, calamity, 
and suffering of every kind. Conformity with the 
relations established by nature, and by one's lot 
in life, is the primary rule of Hving and doing. 

Here also sin is ignored. 

The Epictu-ean philosophers of ancient Greece 
said, "Take life as it comes and enjoy it.'' The 
Stoics said, "Take life as it comes and endure it. " 
Neither system of belief knew or taught anything 
of sin. 

Judaism and Christianity, and the religions de- 
rived therefrom, are the only systems, so far as 
my knowledge goes, that contain or embody any- 
thing like a correct idea or conception of sin. 

As we loathe a soiled garment, so we must learn 
to abhor a soiled moral consciousness that tolerates 
or looks otherwise than with disapproval on any- 
thing that is impure or savors of impurity, whether 
in thought, word, or deed. 

To illustrate : A friend of mine once, in describ- 
ing a third person about whom I asked, said, inter 
alia: "He is so clean, and of such delicate sensibil- 
ity, that if an impure thought should chance to 



244 Sin 

come into his mind, I really think it would make 
him blush." 

Perhaps the description was overdrawn, but it 
illustrates what I mean. 

I apprehend that this is the reason why God 
abhors sin : not so much because it is a violation of 
His law, but rather because He is himself so in- 
effably pure that even the sight of anything impure 
anywhere in His universe is offensive to Him ; and 
the degree of its offensiveness is perhaps measured 
by the infinite perfection of His purity. 

Now, while there can be no possible objection 
to the vigorous efforts made by our clergy to 
convince their congregations of the sinfulness of 
sin, I think the end to be accomphshed — the 
destruction of sin — will sooner be attained by the 
training up of men and women to a standard of 
purity of thought and life, so that anything impure 
will be shunned and avoided because of its impurity. 
It then becomes offensive to us. When sin ceases 
to be pleasant there will be no sinners. As long 
as it is pleasant, or as long as we think it so, 
sermons on the sinfulness of sin will slide from our 
consciences as easily as dew from a cabbage-leaf, 
and without leaving even a wet spot behind. 

In one aspect of the case — and not a theoretical 
aspect either — sin is the result of moral disease, 
and the best, and perhaps the only, way to get 
rid of it is to cure the disease, and this by improving 
the moral status or condition of the individual 
sinner. If the tree be good, the fruit mil be good, 



Sin 245 

and not otherwise (Matt, vii., 18), a fact too often 
forgotten by those who are seeking to reform the 
world by legislation. People cannot be made good 
by act of Congress. Prohibitory laws are utterly 
useless except as they may hold in restraint the 
active and aggressive agents of wrong-doing. In 
many physical diseases, as is well understood, if 
the vitality of the system can be improved, or 
sometimes even maintained, the patient will get 
well of himself. 

I have used a filthy garment to illustrate what 
sin is, but there is one point of difference: the 
garment can ordinarily be cleansed so perfectly as 
to obliterate all trace of the defilement; but a 
defiled moral consciousness can never, at least 
by any process now known to us, be restored to its 
original unstained purity. Possibly it may be 
done in the next world, but not in this. The 
guilt incurred by each of us on account of having, 
by a sinful life, worked his own moral defilement, 
may be provided for under our system of the 
atonement, but the moral stains on one's self 
cannot be wholly obliterated — at least, not in this 
life. A sin committed produces something more 
than a stain; it leaves a scar, a moral deformity. 
The hymn "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than 
snow" expresses a Christian ideal, but for its 
attainment we shall have to wait till we get to the 
other side of Jordan. 

A question as to the unity of the race has been 
much discussed : are all of the present races of the 



246 Sin 

world descended from a common pair of ancestors? 
Physical reasons seem to me to necessitate an 
affirmative answer; but even if it were otherwise, 
the phenomena of sin indicate clearly to my mind 
that, from a moral standpoint and in matters of 
moral guilt and obligation, the race is a unit; for 
under like conditions all branches of the race have 
the same tendency to sin, and such tendency runs 
uniformly in the direction of the same sins; all 
are subject to the same feeling of guilt on learning 
what sin is, and all have the same capacity for 
repentance on being convicted of sin — ^in varying 
degrees, perhaps, but the same in kind. So far 
as has yet been ascertained, the moral organization 
of humanity, like its physical, was originally made 
from a single pattern, and its development, 
whether upward for the better, or downward for 
the worse, lies along the same lines. This being 
so, we may reasonably conclude that the same 
means of salvation are equally suited to the wants 
of all; and herein the facts as we find them coincide 
with and confirm the assurances of Holy Writ. 
Righteousness versus sin is the great question 
of the universe. When that reaches its final 
solution, the other question of salvation versus 
death will disappear. 



THREE ANCIENT TRADITIONS 

While I think that ''Adam and Eden," as set 
forth in Genesis i.-iii., is largely a made-up story, 
though made up and told for reasons that more 
than justify the telling, I also think that next 
following we have a record of three exceedingly 
ancient traditions which were preserved in the 
Semitic family for imtold centuries, and each of 
which has enough of a historical character fully 
to justify its place in the record. These three 
traditions involve: 

1. The Beginnings of Civilization. 

2. The Deluge. 

3. Babel. 

But before considering their significance, it may 
be well to get, if we can, something like an approxi- 
mate idea of their antiquity. 

The earliest Biblical date which can be even 
approximately fixed is that of the first migration 
of Abraham (Gen. xi., 31), say about 2100 B.C., 
though this may include an error of perhaps two 
hundred years. At that time Semitic civilization 
was well established in the Euphrates valley. 
By an ancient inscription discovered some years 
ago, we learn that a Semite king of Babylon, Sar- 

247 



248 Three Ancient Traditions 

gon the First, had carried his conquests westward 
to the shores of the Mediterranean somewhere 
about fifteen hundred years earlier, — say about 

3500 B.C. 

We also learn from the records found in the 
ruins of the distant East that a civilization some- 
times known as Accadian (Gen. x., 10), and by 
some antiquarians believed to be of Turanian or 
Tartar origin, prevailed in the Euphrates valley 
prior to its conquest by the Semites. The date, or 
even the probable date, of this conquest is un- 
known. We can only say that it was probably 
some considerable time, say several centiuies, 
earlier than 3500 B.C. For our present piupose, 
but only as "a working theory," and always 
subject to correction, I will assume that it was not 
far from about 4000 B.C. 

How many centuries back of this we must go 
in order to stand at the very beginnings of Semitic 
civilization, is purely a matter of conjecture; but 
from what we know of the slow development of 
other nations that are still hardly out of barbarism, 
a thousand years would be a moderate estimate. 
Two, three, or even five thousand years are more 
probable periods, but this will do. 

Bear in mind that these traditions certainly 
antedate any historical record yet discovered. 
Many nations have traditions more or less nearly 
allied to these (of which more presently), but 
nowhere do we find any such fact or event narrated 
in the line oj history. In every case the tradition 



Three Ancient Traditions 249 

lies back of any known historical record. Hence 
it will be understood that the dates above given 
are minimum dates, and are given only as possible 
stepping-stones to further conclusions. 

The Book of Genesis was put in its present shape, 
we may say with reasonable certainty, not earlier 
than the time of Moses, or approximately 1500 

B.C. 

Hence we must allow something like thirty -five 
centuries at least, and perhaps twice or three 
times that period, between the dates of these tradi- 
tions and the earliest known date to which can be 
assigned the making of the oldest of our Biblical 
records. Counting back from the present, a like 
period would take us back nearly to the time of 
Moses. In other words, these traditions must be 
at least as much older than Moses as Moses is 
older than we are. 

Let us now consider these traditions in their 
order : 

I. The Beginnings of Civilization. 

Briefly the record runs thus : 

''Jabal was the father of such as dwell in tents 
and have cattle." 

'* Jubal was the father of all such as handle the 
harp and pipe." 

"Tubal-cain, the forger of every cutting instru- 
ment of brass and iron. " (Gen. iv., 20-22.) 

Obviously, these extracts relate to the founding 
of the arts or occupations of the herdsman, the 
musician, and the metal-worker, or ironmaster. 



250 Three Ancient Traditions 

Agriculture was doubtless much older, but the 
name of its "patron saint" was lost. But even 
down to the time of Moses, the names of the other 
three were still preserved in the old traditions or 
folk-lore of the race ; and they are recorded by the 
sacred historian as the next things in importance 
after the fall and the expulsion of Adam and Eve 
from the garden of Eden. 

The ancient Aryans were never much given to 
herding or cattle-raising on a large scale, and 
perhaps this is the reason why, as an occupation, 
it has no place in our early traditions ; nor have we 
any record or tradition of its "father" or foimder; 
but as to the other two, music and metallurgy, 
the names of Pan and Vulcan are still held by us 
in nominal veneration. 

I should conjecture that cattle-raising in that 
early day meant wealth; that music signified 
pleasure; and that metallurgy stood for manu- 
facturing interests as related to the attainment 
of the ordinary comforts and conveniences of life. 
If so, the main objects and aims of practical, 
every-day life have not changed much from the 
times of Jabal and Jubal and Tubal-cain, down to 
the days of Armour and Wagner and Andrew 
Carnegie. Meat, music, and metals are still the 
sine qua non of the life that we live. Men change 
as individuals, but generic man never changes. 
We are still working and living on and along the 
same lines on which civilization was begim many 
thousand years ago, animated by the same mo- 



Three Ancient Traditions 251 

tives, working for the same ends, and very largely 
by the same instrumentalities. The various races 
of cattle have undergone no material change since 
Jabal, from his tent-door, counted his herds and 
congratulated himself on their increasing numbers ; 
the stringed and wind instruments of to-day are 
lineal descendants (degenerates, some of them) of 
the harp and pipe of Jubal; and while we have 
no record of the metal-working appliances of the 
ancient days of Tubal-cain, the fundamental 
principles involved in the earliest known fiunaces 
of three thousand years ago are still utilized in the 
mills at Homestead, Bessemer, and McKeesport. 
Doubtless through these, the principal and 
fundamental elements of actual life and prosperity, 
the foundations of ,an extensive and well-developed 
civilization were laid. With a wealth of flocks and 
herds, the luxury of music and song and the 
personal comforts that we get through the metal- 
worker — with these well developed into their 
various derivative arts, as would be inevitable 
after the beginnings were made, substantially 
everything that is involved in the highest develop- 
ment of the best city life of to-day would be 
attainable, and, as we may reasonably infer, was 
actually attained. The only exceptions are 
painting, sculpture, printing, and navigation. Is 
it not said that Cain built a city? And should the 
rest of the world, having the means at hand, not 
know how? And must we not presume in a city 
life the practical use and enjoyment of everything 



252 Three Ancient Traditions 

then attainable that belongs to a life of that kind? 
In fact, we have no historical record anywhere or 
of any kind that antedates a city as distingmshed 
from a country life. According to this tradi- 
tion, they were developed together, side by side, 
and at a period of time far back of any existing 
historical record. 

That the sons of Shem were proud of their civili- 
zation, just as we are proud of ours, is sufficiently 
proven by the tenacity with which, for so many 
thousand years, the}^ carried in memory and 
prescribed by tradition a knowledge of its begin- 
nings. Time could not obliterate it, nor could the 
deluge wash it out. This feeling of civic pride 
permeates all Semitic literature, and perhaps 
especially the very ancient Book of Job, for its 
author takes evident pleasure in his occasional 
references to flocks and herdsmen (Job xHi., 12), 
to music (Job xxi., 11, 12), and to the work of the 
ironmaster (Job xxviii). 

Nor have I overlooked the fact that Jabal and 
Jubal and Tubal-cain are represented as of the Hne 
of Cain and not of Seth, from the latter of whom 
the Jews derived their descent. Why this is done 
is not explained. Most probably it means that 
these elements of Semitic civilization were not 
original "v^dth that race, but were borrowed from 
some neighboring people — perhaps somewhat as 
the Japanese have more recently borrowed from 
the Western nations the art of war. Such 
borrowing is quite common. We ourselves have 



Three Ancient Traditions 253 

borrowed our alphabet from Tyre and Sidon; our 
mathematics from Arabia; our literature from 
Greece; our law from Rome; our religion from 
Jerusalem. 

Obviously, this old tradition of the beginnings of 
civilization, though brief in its record, includes a 
very large section of the early history of the remote 
ancestors of the Semitic races, and as such is well 
entitled to the place it holds in the BibHcal records, 
and is equally well entitled to acceptance and 
credence for the knowledge it gives us. 

Possibly with further discoveries among the 
ruins of the distant East it may acquire a new and 
still larger meaning. There is no danger that it 
will ever be discredited, for it runs strictly along 
the lines of human experience, and is rigidly 
consonant with the fact of history and with what 
might reasonably be expected to be true. 

But we realty have no data by which to deter- 
mine the time of the beginnings of civilization. 
That part of the Book of Genesis which antedates 
the first migration of Abraham, though doubtless 
including many matters of fact, can scarcely be 
regarded as history in the modern sense of the 
word. Still less can we look to it for any reHable 
information in matters of chronology, for though 
the Jews preserved family pedigrees with great 
care, they cared little for the particular dates of 
the general events of history, as the Book of Judges 
sufficiently proves. When man first appeared on 
the earth is not known even approximately. Our 



254 Three Ancient Traditions 

geologists tell us that the earth has been in condi- 
tion for his occupancy for an unknown but very 
long period, variously estimated at from fifty to a 
hundred thousand years. But when he actually 
came on the scene, nobody knows. How long he 
lived in a state of savagery and barbarism is just 
as little known. Some, in fact some millions, of 
the race are in that state or condition 3^et, Hence 
the beginnings of civilization, as reported in 
Genesis, must be referred to a very remote anti- 
quity, so remote that nothing whatever can be 
said as to its date. 

2. The Deluge. 

It is evident that at some time or other some 
great disaster in the nature of a tropical tornado or 
cyclone overwhelmed a stretch or area of territory 
then occupied by the particular people from whom 
the Hebrew tribes claimed descent; and so over- 
whelming was the disaster that only a single 
family was known to have escaped. Torrents of 
rain fell from the clouds, and a tidal wave from the 
sea swept inward over the land (Gen. vii., 6), to 
the destruction of all animal life within the sub- 
merged territory (verse 2i). 

At this time, however (whenever it was), 
civilization had so far progressed that the arts 
of ship-building and navigation were well knowTi. 
According to the understanding of the writer, a 
long period had elapsed since the days of Jabal, 
Jubal, and Tubal-cain, a period variously esti- 
mated, from the chronologies given, at from one 



Three Ancient Traditions 255 

thousand to two thousand years; but really we 
know nothing as to its length. The escape of the 
single family of Noah is attributed by the writer, 
first, to the fact that Noah was providentially 
warned of the coming disaster in ample time, and 
second, was sufficiently versed in ship-building 
and navigation to make the necessary provision 
for safety. 

As to the territory covered by this disaster, we 
can only infer that it extended from a contiguous 
seacoast line to "the mountains of Ararat" (Gen. 
viii., 4), which would seem to mean the Euphrates 
valley. The statement that all the earth was sub- 
merged, and all animal life destroyed, is evidently 
the statement of an eye-witness. While the ark, 
bearing Noah and his company, was floating on the 
waste of waters, there was no land nor life in sight* 

That such a disaster should at some time have 
befallen the occupants of some seacoast territory 
is nothing especially remarkable. That at least 
one of the inhabitants, particularly if he was 
familiar with the ways of the sea, with wind and 
weather, should have had some premonitions of 
the coming storm might natiu-ally be expected. 
If, so far as he knew, when it was all over, he and 
his family were the sole survivors, it need excite no 
wonder if he and his descendants so narrated it 
till it became a fixed tradition. 

Hence at least the leading events of the tradi- 
tion contain nothing improbable, and are worthy 
of credence. 



256 Three Ancient Traditions 

As to the time when the deluge occurred, 
everything I have said as to the antiquity of the 
Jabal et al. tradition appHes here also. Though 
ten or twenty centuries may have intervened, 
both events go so far back into the darkness of 
antiquity that no date can be assigned to either. 
And as to the deluge, we have two or three 
additional facts that indicate an indeterminate 
antiquity. 

(i) The recorded fact that the ark finally 
grounded ''upon the mountains of Ararat" (Gen. 
viii., 4) would seem to indicate that the highlands 
of Armenia were once the home of the ancestors of 
the Semitic races. If so, then the time of the 
deluge must have been long prior to any period 
of which we have historical record; for, from the 
earliest dawn of history, that territory has been 
occupied by tribes either of Aryan or Turanian 
origin. If the Semites ever held that country, it 
must have been many thousands of years ago. 

(2) Traditions of a devastating deluge are 
found among many widely scattered nations of 
widely different racial descent. Every such tradi- 
tion antedates any and every historic record of 
every such nation. 

(3) According to the arrangement of the text, 
the writer considered that the deluge antedated 
the division (at Babel) and the consequent dispersal 
of at least three of the leading races of the earth — 
the sons of Japheth (Aryan), the sons of Shem 
(Semitic), and the sons of Ham (African). 



Three Ancient Traditions 257 

The time when that division occurred is as 
completely unknown and as indeterminable as is 
the date of the creation of man. 

But this deluge tradition has a religious signi- 
ficance that gives it its chief value, and but for 
which it is doubtful if any record of it would have 
been made. Herein chief prominence is given not 
to the deluge itself, but rather : 

(a) To the divine agency which brought it 
about ; 

(b) To the reasons wh}^ Jehovah did it; and 

(c) To the exalted faith exercised by the sole 
survivor; and to the fact that, on accoimt of such 
faith, he and his family survived. 

The impressive inculcation of these three lessons 
furnished abundant reason for the preservation 
of the ancient tradition. 

(a) The first lesson was the supremacy of 
Jehovah, which was the fundamental article of the 
monotheistic faith of the Hebrew tribes. But for 
this, the Jewish religion would have been merely 
one of a hundred religions, perhaps better than the 
others, but with no warrant for laying claim to 
being the only religion. 

(b) As to the second point. Why did Jehovah 
do it? the answer is, as narrated in the record 
(Gen. vi., 5-12), because the entire race was wicked, 
overwhelmed with wickedness, saturated with 
wickedness, wicked in everything it did or tried 
or planned to do, wicked from the initial thought 
through to the final act. In the conception of 



258 Three Ancient Traditions 

the writer, it was so entirely gone in wickedness as 
to be beyond all hope of redemption. 

Now, in Semitic thought, when any person or 
people met with disaster or calamity, or even 
serious misfortune, such a fact alone argued, and 
argued conclusively, that such person or people 
had sinned, and the greatness or extent of the 
calamity was a correct measure of the greatness of 
the sin (John ix., 2). 

Hence when the sacred writer wanted us to know 
how excessively wicked himianity had got to be, he 
illustrated and proved his statements by telhng 
us what an awful disaster it met with. In his 
conception, the disaster proved the wickedness of 
the victims, and its awfulness proved the depth, 
extent, and depravity of such wickedness. 

(c) The third lesson was a lesson of faith and its 
reward (Heb. xi., 7), a lesson that hiimanity then 
needed to learn; a lesson that God's messengers 
have been proclaiming to wicked men during all 
the intermediate ages, and a lesson that will 
continue to be taught to the end of time. 

Obviously, the inculcation of these three lessons 
was a sufficient reason for the recording of this 
old tradition of the deluge, and this, too, even if the 
tradition had, before the writer's time, grown by 
repetition until it included some details that to us 
seem improbable. The man who measures the 
square feet of floor-surface in the ark with reference 
to the standing-room required for male and female 
representatives of the whole animal kingdom, and 



Three Ancient Traditions 259 

regulates thereby his belief in divine revelation, 
has yet to learn the meaning of this record. The 
man who, to the neglect of the intended lessons, 
seeks to convert questions of ship-building and 
the stabling of animals into articles of faith and 
standards of orthodoxy is badly in need of further 
light. At least such is my opinion. 

3. Bahel. 

The third of these old traditions is that of Babel. 
Like the other two, it goes back for its origin to an 
indeterminate time. There are no data now exist- 
ing by which we can compute even the probable 
time when the sons of Shem, Ham, and Japheth 
separated and each went his own way. 

Except as I shall presently mention, I do not 
see that this Babel tradition has any particular 
reHgious significance. But the writer of Genesis 
was evidently an ethnologist of wide observation 
and high attainments; Genesis x., the oldest 
ethnological record in existence, sufficiently proves 
that. While he believed in the unity of mankind, 
he was apparently unable to give any scientific 
explanation of the great differences that he ob- 
served between the languages of different races. In 
fact, except as between cognate races, such differ- 
ences have not been explained yet. But the writer 
did the best he could and gave us an explanation 
that doubtless accorded with the best science of 
his day. 

He found in existence, and adopted for his use, 
an old tradition to the effect that the descendants 



26o Three Ancient Traditions 

of those who survived the deluge, preferring, as 
many a migratory people has done since, the 
productiveness of a river-valley to the compara- 
tive sterility of a mountainous region, migrated 
from the Ararat uplands, where the deluge had 
left them, back to their old homes, to a locality 
known as Shinar, down in the low and level plains 
of the Euphrates. To avoid future danger, they 
set out to build a tower so high that no tidal- 
wave could submerge it. Before it was finished, 
they got into a wrangle about something; verbal 
disagreements led to, or by frequent repetitions 
were magnified into, linguistic differences; the 
divergent parties became different races ; and each 
went a different way. This explanation was 
satisfactory then; and while we reject it, our best 
scholars have found none that is better. 

The leading religious lesson that the writer had 
in mind was probably this: the impiousness and 
foolishness of thinking and trying to outwit God. 
The failure to do so was a failure then ; nor has it 
ever succeeded since. 

I cannot help admiring the honest simplicity 
and ingenuousness of the writer, and his scholarly 
attainments as well, in thus working the religious 
truths he wished to teach into the cherished tradi- 
tions of his remote ancestors. It made pleasant 
reading. Ponderous treatises on theology may 
come and go, but these stories of the infancy of 
our race will, like the babbling brook, "go on 
forever." The world will never tire of reading 



Three Ancient Traditions 261 

them. Even to the mature mind they are as 
charming as ^sop's Fables, Grimm's Tales, and 
the folk-lore of Odin and Thor; and like them, 
each has its own moral, so obvious on its face that 
he who runs may read. But in our modem line 
of thought we have carelessly or studiously neg- 
lected the moral of the story in order to swear to 
the Hteral truth of its details. The latter, though 
of great literary interest, are, in my view, of Httle 
consequence otherwise, except as a means of 
bringing the moral of the story, or its intended 
religious teaching, within the easy apprehension 
of everybody. The man who throws away the 
oyster, and tries to masticate the shell, belongs 
to the same class as he who, forgetting the moral, 
makes the story itself an essential article of faith. 



SOME PENALTIES AND A PROMISE 

As a result of the introduction of sin into the 
world, the sacred writer informs us, certain penal- 
ties were inflicted on the active agents through 
whom it was brought about — the serpent, the man, 
and the woman (Gen. iii., 14-19). 

But the singular fact is that the penalties 
imposed contained nothing that was new to the 
organization of the particular individuals affected 
thereby. Thus nothing new was involved in the 
penalty imposed on the serpent: ''Upon thy belly 
shalt thou go"; for the serpent had always so 
wriggled its way along from the day of its creation. 
"Thorns and thistles" were not a new infliction, 
for the earth had produced them from the early 
days of its fertility. Of man and his present 
physical organization, we can truthfully say that 
he and it were specially adapted for work and toil 
and sweat, whereby to acquire necessary susten- 
ance, nor did his penalty make him any more so. 
And as for woman, her lot after sentence contained 
nothing of suffering beyond what her physical 
condition already necessitated. As has been 
frequently remarked, the history and condition 
of the earth clearly indicate that it was originally 

262 



Some Penalties and a Promise 263 

designed, built, and equipped, not for an Edenic 
life, but for the occupancy of just such a sinful 
race as now Hves on it. None of the penalties 
above referred to have subjected any of the guilty 
parties to any physical punishment outside of 
what appears to have been, in the orderings of 
nature, his, her, or its previously appointed lot. 

Hence, according to Anglo-Saxon ideas, none 
of these penalties were really in the nature of 
punishments for the particular offense in question. 
But the Semitic peoples looked at these matters 
very differently. In their way of thinking, crime 
and suffering always went together ; or, rather, the 
latter invariably followed the former; and they 
seldom troubled themselves with any distinction 
between a misfortune that was caused by or 
resulted from a crime. To them the sequence was 
enough. If a party was guilty, and soon after- 
ward met with misfortune of any kind, the two 
were associated together in their line of thought, 
and inseparably associated, just as if it were a 
clear case of cause and effect (Luke xiii., 1-4). 
This mode of thinking was of course very illogical, 
but the Orientals as a general rule are not logical 
and never were. 

Now, the Anglo-Saxons, being generally more 
accustomed to logical habits of thought, are unable 
to understand how a penalty that does not embody, 
or in some way contain, some new and objection- 
able experience to the individual, can be to him a 
punishment. If the serpent always went on his 



264 Some Penalties and a Promise 

belly, and could not possibly go in any other way, 
how could it be a punishment to him for a new 
offense to be told that for the future he must 
always go that way? 

Still, we Anglo-Saxons retain even yet a trace 
of the same illogical style of reasoning, though we 
partially conceal it by the use of such phrases as 
''the eternal fitness of things," or ''good enough 
for him," or "serves him right." It is only in 
accordance with "the eternal fitness of things" 
that reptiles so obnoxious and repulsive and 
treacherous and dangerous as are the serpents of 
tropical countries should crawl on their bellies 
to the end of time. Such a life is "good enough" 
for a snake, and "serves him right" for being a 
snake — and this without regard to any crime that 
may be laid to his charge. 

And we sometimes argue, or at least think, the 
same way about some men. Our regrets are 
coldly spoken, or not spoken at all, when we have 
in mind the misfortunes of men who are excessively 
mean, or inordinately selfish, or unusually brutal, 
or for any reason are objects of hatred or contempt. 
Even though the misfortune may have no relation 
to the offensive characteristics of the man, still 
we think, though politeness may forbid us to say 
it, "good enough for him, " or "serves him right. " 

Such, as I apprehend the matter, is with us the 
residual remnant of the old Semitic idea that mis- 
fortune or calamity necessarily implies a pre- 
existent crime, and that the former is the intended 



Some Penalties and a Promise 265 

punishment for the latter. So construed, I can 
understand the record of the penalties referred to. 

But it may be that the writer of this accoimt, 
under the form of a parable of a crime and its 
penalties, was really intending to tell us something 
else. In what I have said of ''Adam and Eden" 
I have explained that one probable purpose of the 
narrative was to tell us that man was responsible 
for the introduction of sin into the world and for 
all the moral evil appertaining thereto or result- 
ing therefrom. It was, perhaps, still further the 
thought of the writer that man was also responsible 
for the physical badness which exists in himself 
and in all animate nature — for its "thorns and 
thistles" — ^for the physical necessity that compels 
man to work in order that he may live, and also 
for the suffering incident to the reproduction of 
life, and that all this, in some way which he could 
not explain (nor can we) , came about through or on 
account of his own voluntary sin. If such was the 
writer's thought, we must say of him that, as 
regards a knowledge of the moral system of the 
universe in respect of its beginnings, he knew 
quite as much as we know now, and quite as much 
as we are likely to find out, at least in the present 
life. The final solution of this, and of many like 
questions, will probably belong to another life in 
another world. 

I txim now to the promise of Genesis ix., 12-17, 
the rainbow and its meaning. 

Apparently the same line of thought that led to 



266 Some Penalties and a Promise 

the association of an old penalty with a new crime 
led also to the association of an old rainbow with a 
new but confident hope or expectation, divinely 
supported: that the deluge of Noah was so excep- 
tional or extraordinary an event that its like 
would never occur again. Abstractly the rainbow 
of Noah had no more relation to the deluge-storm 
than any other rainbow had to the particular 
shower that produced it; but a new association of 
ideas was estabHshed by the promise. The rain- 
bow then meant something, and probably for the 
first time ; since with the little scientific knowledge 
then available, it is doubtful if anybody at that 
time knew how a rainbow was produced. Prob- 
ably this, like other mysteries of nature, such as 
the blowing of the wind (II. Sam. v., 24), was 
attributed directly to divine agency. But now 
the God to whom they ascribed it assured them 
that thereafter it would have a meaning. Grate- 
fully and joyfully they accepted the assiorance 
without troubling themselves as to how or why. 
It was enough for them to know that a relationship 
of some kind was divinely established. Whether 
it was purely artificial or imaginary, as distin- 
guished from causative, is a question they never 
stopped to consider. Hence the record, as they 
understood and applied it, was rigidly true, and 
highly instructive as well as true, in that it estab- 
lished to their satisfaction, and gave them a 
perpetual reminder, that: 

''While the earth remaineth seedtime and 



Some Penalties and a Promise 267 

harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, 
and day and night shall not cease" (Gen. viii., 22). 

Nor is it anything unusual in our own ways of 
thinking to give an old object a new meaning. We 
frequently convert natural objects into perpetual 
memorials of something else. Thunder-storms 
were not new in the Catskills when Henry Hudson 
first sailed up the river that still bears his name, 
but the Rip Van Winkle legend gave to such a 
storm a new association in the minds of men. 
After JuHus Caesar theatrically crossed the insig- 
nificant stream that formed one of the boundaries 
of Rome, the new meaning then acquired by its 
old name, the Rubicon, became permanently 
historic. But such illustrations are too common to 
require further citation. 

I think it highly probable that the rainbow- 
promise may have had another meaning. As I 
have elsewhere explained, in ''Three Ancient 
Traditions, " the deluge was thought to have been 
necessitated by the extent and depravity of human 
wickedness. But it was now promised that such a 
necessity would never again arise; or, as I would 
conjecture, it was believed that by or as a result 
of some new or more efficient form or manifestation 
of divine agency, entering the world and acting 
in the hearts and on the Hves of men, the race 
would never again reach such depths of wickedness 
as to require the employment of so drastic and 
destructive a remedy. From the new standpoint 
then occupied, the race was to be and would be 



268 Some Penalties and a Promise 

saved and not again destroyed. Perhaps this 
was what the rainbow ultimately meant; that is, 
that the world would thereafter grow better 
instead of worse. If so, the promise has not been 
left wholly unfulfilled. 

In the spirit in which Sancho Panza said, "Bless- 
ings on him who invented sleep, " I would devoutly 
say: "Blest be the man who invented the rain- 
bow," for it contains the initiatory promise and 
pledge of the millennium. 



THE STORY OF THE CREATION 

In Adam and Eden (Vol. iii., p. i) I have stated 
my belief that the account of the temptation and 
the fall was not historical, and was not intended 
to be, but rather was allegorical, and this for 
sufficient reasons and good piirposes as there 
stated. 

In "Three Ancient Traditions" (i) the Jabal, 
Jubal and Tubal-cain story, (2) the deluge 
account, and (3) the Babel episode, I have recog- 
nized as to each a historical substratum or basis, 
but have pointed out how exceedingly ancient 
must be the facts or occurrences from which each 
of these traditions took its origin, really going 
back of and far beyond any historical record or 
knowledge now existent anywhere — that is to say, 
over and above what is here recorded. 

Of the story of the creation, I think it quite 
clear: (i) that it is not allegorical, but is a genuine 
record of a divine revelation; (2) that, viewed 
solely from a scientific standpoint, it so far con- 
forms with the best science of the present day that 
it is entitled to rank as a true and correct, though 
exceedingly brief, sketch of the work of creation; 
(3) that, in point of antiquity, this revelation goes 

269 



270 The Story of the Creation 

back and is lost in the same historical darkness as 
the "Three Ancient Traditions" above referred to, 
and possibly was much earlier than any of them. 

We may be reasonably siire that it came origin- 
ally by divine revelation, because, so far as we 
know or can fairly surmise, there was no other way 
by which it could have become known to the 
inhabitants of the earth, for it was evidently 
impossible that human eyes could have been there 
to see and make record of the work as it originated 
and progressed. Our best scientists tell us that 
through the millions of years prior to about the 
time designated as ''the fifth day" the earth was 
not in condition for the occupancy of man; in 
fact, until about that time man, with his present 
physical organization, could not have lived on its 
surface. Hence, whatever actual knowledge the 
race may have acquired, as to the origin of the 
earth and of all things that are therein, must have 
come from some superhuman source and by what 
we call revelation. 

Nor could this stor^^ have been made up, since, 
at the latest date to which the writing of Genesis 
can possibly be assigned, the science involved in 
the orderly and successive steps of this narrative 
did not exist; for modem vscience is exceedingly 
modern. I can readily see that an attentive ob- 
server of a remote antiquity might have surmised, 
and perhaps might have concluded, that animal life 
was impossible until the earth was well stocked with 
vegetation; that fish could not have Hved until 



The Story of the Creation 271 

they had water to swim in; and that vegetation 
could not have been looked for until a fertile soil 
was provided; but for any reasonable theory as 
to how there came to be a soil, and how it came to 
be fertile, and where the ocean came from, the 
data though observable, as we now know, were not 
apprehended or understood imtil very recently. 
There was not enough known at that early date to 
justify even an intelligent guess as to the origin 
of things, either animate or inanimate. The 
monstrous guesses found in the cosmogonies of 
imcivilized nations furnish almost conclusive 
proof that the Genesis story of the creation is 
something a good deal higher than guesswork. 
So accurate is it that the best science of the world 
to-day cannot in the same number of words tell 
it any better. 

Certainly the first man who put that story in 
cognizable form, either oral or written, not only 
knew what he was talking about, but he knew it 
from some soiu*ce external to himself. He had no 
science to guide him in shaping it; he could not 
have guessed it; he may have dreamed it, and I 
think it highly probable that by means of a dream 
or series of dreams, it was first made known; but 
there was a divine intelligence present to shape 
and develop the dream. Human guesses and 
human dreams, unless guided and controlled by 
some power "whose dwelling is not with flesh," 
do not follow along the undiscovered and unknown 
Hnes of exact science. 



2']2 The Story of the Creation 

As to the antiquity of this story, or the time 
when it was first revealed, but little can be said. 
Our oldest record of it is in Hebrew; but as com- 
pared with the antiquity of the race, Hebrew is 
probably a modern language. Our scholars tell 
us that it was not the original speech of Abraham, 
but was a local dialect of one or more of the 
Canaanite tribes, and was adopted by the de- 
scendants of Abraham at some date nowtmknowT:!, 
perhaps prior to the time of Moses, perhaps later. 
From the dug-up records of the remote East, we 
find that in the folk-lore or traditions of the Baby- 
lonian Chaldeans, long before the time of Abraham, 
there was extant a story of the creation which, 
though pervaded and loaded down with the puerili- 
ties of polytheism, still has many points of resem- 
blance to the narrative in Genesis, and is so 
strikingly similar as to indicate that the two had a 
probably common origin. In other words, both 
the Genesis story and the Chaldean story go back 
to a revelation that antedates all existing records 
and all historical periods of which we have any 
knowledge. 

From all of which I think we may reasonably 
surmise: (i) that such a revelation was made in 
the very early history of the race, and to some 
branch of it now unknown, but a possible tradition 
of which is preserved in the Enoch story of Genesis 
v., 21-24; (2) that as the race degenerated morally, 
as it certainly did, the revelation referred to be- 
came corrupted and loaded down with heathenish 



The Story of the Creation 273 

variations and additions and in that degenerate 
form became a part of the traditional folk-lore 
of the scholars of ancient Chaldea ; (3) that in this 
form it passed, along with other learning of the 
Chaldean schools, into the civilization of Western 
Asia, probably at the time of the early Babylonian 
supremacy, which, from other records, we know 
to have been extended westward to the Mediter- 
ranean many centuries prior to Abraham ; and (4) 
that the writer of the Genesis narrative, under the 
guidance of a new inspiration, eliminated from 
that tradition its heathenish, puerile, and poly- 
theistic errors, and practically restored the revela- 
tion to its original, genuine form. But who the 
writer was we do not know, nor is it important 
that we should. The record shows that he was a 
master- workman in that particular field. It may 
have been Moses, though I doubt it ; but I do not 
care to dissent from those who so believe. Who- 
ever wrote it, it comes to us backed up by divine 
authority, expressed, first, on the face and in the 
substance of the record itself, and second, in its 
practical consonance with and confirmation by 
the ascertained facts of science. That story and 
the story of the earth itself, both have the same 
divine origin. 

There is one fact revealed in this Genesis account 
as to which science is wholly silent, the fact that 
all life, motion, and matter owe their origin to the 
creative act of an extramimdane power or agency, 
or perhaps to a series of such acts. Science cannot 



274 The Story of the Creation 

and does not pretend to account for the origin of 
anything except as it may have come derivatively 
from something different which previously existed. 
How the first life, or the first movement of anything, 
or the first form of matter came into being — in 
regard to these beginnings, science is totally and 
profoundly ignorant. Self -creation is more abhor- 
rent to genuine science, and is more inconceivable 
and incredible, than an extramundane Creator. 
As a working theory, and, so far as we now know, 
a possibly true theory, science many years ago 
worked its way back to something which it called 
an "atom," but so infinitesimally small that no 
microscope can isolate it, and consequently it is 
cognizable only by the imagination. Proceeding 
from this point, science has (or thinks it has) more 
recently resolved its infinitesimal atoms into 
swirling vortexes, each made up of myriads of 
"electrons" or "corpuscles," but about which 
it knows nothing except that they, as conceived of, 
represent some form of movement or force, and 
possibly constitute the first form of matter. 
There science stops. It can go no further. As to 
the ultimate origin of movement or force, science 
does not tell us anything, but Genesis does: "The 
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" 
(Gen. i., 2) ; and motion means force. "And God 
said, Let there be light, and light was" (verse 3) ; 
and next after motion, light was the first form or 
manifestation of force cognizable to the eye. The 
primordial relationship of matter and force is not 



The Story of the Creation 275 

yet scientifically known. Genesis tells us all we 
know on that subject. 

Science may be correct when it says, as it does 
through a certain school of its advanced votaries, 
that, given matter and force to begin with, they 
could, under the action of known laws, evolve the 
universe. But of the origin of matter, the origin of 
force, and the origin of the laws that pervade and 
dominate both matter and force, we have no 
knowledge except what we can gather from the 
account in Genesis. If this account be not true, 

"... this I dare boldly tell, 
'T is so like truth, 't will serve our turn as well." 

Did Moses write this story along with the intro- 
ductory chapters of Genesis? I am unable to 
disprove the theory that he did, but I very much 
doubt it. According to the record of his Hfe, he 
had no particular interest in such matters during 
the first third of it, when, as a prince of Egypt, he 
was a member of the court of Pharaoh ; nor during 
the second third of it, when, as a fugitive from the 
wrath of the King, he filled the position of a shep- 
herd in the distant land of Midian. The last 
third of his life, forty years in round numbers, was 
occupied with "matters and things," and was 
spent amid surroundings, all of which were the 
reverse of favorable to high-class authorship. 
He had twelve unruly and discordant tribes to 
manage; tribes that were jealous of each other, 



276 The Story of the Creation 

and, except his own tribe of Levi, likewise jealous 
of him; tribes composed of people just out of 
serfdom. As Egyptian serfs they had been given 
to the usages and practices of Egyptian idolatry, 
and though they generally yielded to Moses the 
authority of nominal leadership, they did not 
hesitate to rebel whenever things did not go to 
suit their wishes or whims. Under such conditions, 
and for such a people, Moses had to devise and 
inaugiu-ate a system of civil government or rule 
and get them to obey it; also a system of religion 
that was practically new, and because it was new, 
was accepted with reluctance; and also a military 
organization for protection against a hostile environ- 
ment, and for the conquest which he and they 
looked forward to. Nor was their manner of life at 
all favorable for either a high religious or a high 
literary development. During these forty years 
they lived a nomadic pastoral life, a good part of 
the time in the wide region of country around 
Kadesh-Bamea. The settled conditions of civili- 
zation were wanting. Pasturage and water for 
flocks and herds were the first necessity, in a region 
where, at certain times of the year, both were 
scarce. Conditions that forbid a settled home 
and compel a continuous struggle for existence are 
not favorable for the development of a revelation, 
nor for the preparation of a history of a remote 
religious antiquity which had no contemporary 
interest or importance. 

But notwithstanding all this, the prevalent use 



The Story of the Creation 277 

of the name of Moses in connection with these 
chapters, and with the Pentateuch as a whole, is 
perfectly correct and proper, fully as much so as 
the universal use of the name of the first Emperor 
of the French in connection with the Code Napo- 
leon, even though the latter probably contains but 
little from the pen of that illustrious personage. 
That the Pentateuch contains many documents 
which belong to the Mosaic period, as well as some 
that are probably much older, cannot be a matter 
of reasonable doubt. That as a whole it records 
and reflects the spirit and doings of the time of 
Moses, — ^how he and his people lived and thought 
and worshiped and warred and sinned, were 
punished and repented, and how after sundry 
delays, defeats, failures, disappointments, and 
vicissitudes, they finally attained possession of 
what they had been taught to regard as their 
ancestral home — all this may be accepted as 
veritable Mosaic history. That the hero of that 
history, or the man who made the histor>^ should 
have the honor and glory and earthly immortality 
which belong to or accrue from a faithful record 
of such history, is no more than his due; and this 
for the further reason that his character and per- 
sonality are indelibly stamped on it and give it its 
chief practical value through all succeeding time. 



BIBLICAL REVISION 

One of the '* signs of the times" is a steadily 
increasing restlessness over, or in view of, the 
defects in oiir authoritative translations of the 
Bible — and by ''authoritative" I refer particularly 
to the versions known as the ''Authorized" or 
"King James" version, and the "Revised." 
While the latter is a great improvement over the 
former, it fails to satisfy, I will not say public 
demands, but rather public wants. For though 
there is little or no public clamor on the subject, 
there is a constantly growing indifference or neglect 
as respects the matter of Bible-reading and Bible- 
study on the part of both the real and the nominal 
lay adherents of the Christian faith. Some of the 
causes of this neglect will appear as we proceed. 
But the neglect itself shows that there is in the 
minds of people of that class a manifest feeling of 
dissatisfaction with the Book itself in its present 
rendering ; and consequently there is a real, though 
perhaps rarely expressed, want of something better. 
This dissatisfaction is distinctly voiced in the 
growing hostility to the reading of the Bible in our 
public schools. Much of this hostility lacks 
sincerity, and much of it is partisan in character, 

278 



Biblical Revision 279 

but some of it is honest, though generally based on 
erroneous considerations. And in further proof of 
the existence of this dissatisfaction, note may be 
made, first, of the steadily increasing nimiber of 
private or unauthorized translations, some of 
which are not translations at all, but free and 
sometimes very crude paraphrases of the original; 
and secondly, that Biblical teachers, in their class- 
rooms, are compelled to resort to their own trans- 
lations or paraphrasing methods of speech, in 
order to bring what is said within the ready com- 
prehension of their hearers. 

Now, it goes without saying that a book which 
is intended for the use of all sorts and conditions 
of men and women and children, especially where 
matters of life and death, of good morals here and 
immortality hereafter are involved — that such a 
book should have at least the following among 
other essential characteristics : 

I. The intended primary meaning of what it 
says should be reasonably clear to the compre- 
hension of the average lay reader. To talk to a 
man in forms of speech which he does not under- 
stand involves a waste of time on the part of the 
speaker, and wearies and disgusts the hearer. 

To illustrate: The phrase "the body of this 
death" (Rom. vii., 24), as an English phrase, is 
utterly meaningless to the average layman. The 
same is true regarding the phrase "the mind of the 
flesh" (Rom. viii., 6), and regarding many other 
expressions that appear in both the Authorized 



28o Biblical Revision 

and Revised versions. It is no part of my present 
purpose to make a compilation of such phrases; 
I wish only to call attention to them. 

A few Greek and Hebrew idioms of speech are 
retained with some resultant obscurity, due to the 
idioms themselves, where the actual meaning 
could be equally well expressed by an English 
phrase of equal brevity and force. Thus, ''Thou 
hast said" (Matt, xxvi., 64) might better read, 
''It is as you say," or "I am." "What have I to 
do with thee?" (John ii., 4) might well be changed 
to "What is that to me? " These illustrations might 
be multiplied. 

2. The Bible, for the use of English-speaking 
readers of the present day, should, in respect to 
sexual matters, conform to present standards of 
cleanness. 

The fact that the ancient Jews, along with the 
heathen peoples by whom they were surrounded, 
were (if judged by modem standards) unclean of 
speech, even in some cases down to the uncleanness 
of the modem barroom and brothel, is no reason 
why we should be equally unclean. Such things 
are incompatible with the purity of heart of 
Matthew v., 8. As a people, we have outgrown 
that comparatively low state or degree of civiliza- 
tion, but we have retained and most pertinaciously 
clung to the sexual filth which they, in their 
ignorance or under their peculiar usages of speech, 
put into the sacred record. It is time — ^high time 
— that we had a clean Bible. On this point I 



Biblical Revision 281 

speak advisedly; and any man who, in family 
worship, having sons and daughters of years of 
discretion, has attempted to read the Bible 
through in course, will not need to ask me to cite 
chapter and verse in order to make good what I 
say. 

This characteristic of our present Bible — by 
which I mean the freedom and coarseness with 
which sexual matters are mentioned, especially in 
the Old Testament, though occasionally also in the 
New — is more of a hindrance to the general use 
of the Bible than most of our religious authorities 
imagine. A single illustration now occurs to me. 
Not very long ago, I happened to be in a bookstore 
chatting with the proprietor, when a mutual friend, 
a business man of wealth, high morals, and good 
standing, but of no religious pretensions, came in 
and asked if there was any edition of the Bible 
published that omitted the offensive sensualism 
so often found in the Old Testament. He was a 
bachelor himself, but had many nephews and nieces 
just coming to years of discretion, and he wished to 
buy and present each of them with such a Bible. 
And I also happen to know of cases in which young 
boys have, without any improvement to their 
purity of heart, amused themselves by looking up 
and making a jest of erotic phrases, references, and 
descriptions which were not needed and are of no 
value for the purpose of religious instruction and 
growth in grace. 

As to the authority of the church to make such 



282 Biblical Revision 

omissions from the Bible record, I shall have 
something to say presently. 

3. The fact that fully one third of the Old 
Testament is made up of matter which is of no 
possible interest, concern, or benefit to anybody 
(except the antiquarian), either for this life or the 
next, detracts very greatly from its attractiveness, 
or even suitability, for general reading. 

If any one feels inclined to doubt the accuracy 
of this statement, let him read the Old Testament 
in course — the whole of it — with blue pencil in 
hand, and make his record as he goes along. When 
he gets through he will agree with me. 

Now, if revision were made in respect of only 
three matters, (i) meaningless and obscure render- 
ings, (2) gross sexual references, and (3) profitless 
details, leaving all the rest of the Bible as it now 
reads in the ''American Standard Edition" of 
the Revised Version, I think it perfectly clear that 
we should have a Bible equally good for all the 
purposes of religion, and a great deal better for 
general and devotional reading by English-speaking 
men, women, and children. We shotild also have a 
Bible against which, for use in our pubHc schools, 
much less could be said. 

The efforts of private revisers, at least of all 
whose work I have seen, are open to the very 
serious, if not fatal, objection that they have re- 
vised too much ; that is, they have gone far ahead 
of what the public want. The poetic beauty and 
archaic attractiveness of the greater part of the 



Biblical Revision 283 

present version so justly appeal to the average 
religious taste and good sense of people at large 
that an over-modernization of the text is vigor- 
ously resented. But every new reviser, having set 
out to revise, measures his success by the amount 
of revising he does. In such hands the good and 
bad suffer alike together; and hence, in every 
private revision I have seen, the remedy of the 
new is worse than the disease of the old. Revision 
should undoubtedly be made, but it should be 
made slowly. First, obvious and material defects 
should be corrected, and no others ; the Book, as so 
corrected, should be tested by a considerable and 
prolonged usage, say of the average lifetime of a 
generation, whereby to ascertain (i) whether the 
corrections thus made constitute an improvement 
in public apprehension, and (2) if they do, wherein 
and how can the rendering be fiurther improved, 
so as the better to adapt it to the religious wants 
of the English-speaking race. 

The work of revision, if it be done as it ought to 
be done, is not the work of a day or a year, or even 
of a single generation. In no case should the 
integrity of the Bible as a book of righteousness 
and salvation be destroyed, or even lessened or 
impaired. In all other respects, it should be 
made to conform to those conditions and require- 
ments which will make it most efficacious for the 
purposes for which it was written; and in order 
that it shall be most highly efficacious, it must be 
so revised as to make it acceptable to all who have 



284 Biblical Revision 

any interest in, or desire a knowledge of, its 
contents. The revision completed in 1885 was a 
great work, ably and devoutly done. Use has 
stamped on that work the general approval of the 
church. But that revision was especially devoted 
to other points than the three above noted. I 
humbly submit, but only as the opinion of a not 
inattentive layman, that the scholars of the Holy 
Catholic Chturch ought now to give their attention 
and efforts to a further revision whereby (i) to 
render Hebrew and Greek idioms into modem 
English ; (2) to give us a clean Bible, clean on every 
page; and (3) to eliminate from its pages such 
details as do not in any way, shape, or manner 
concern either righteousness in this life, or immor- 
tality in the next. After twenty or thirty years, 
use of a Bible so revised, the church will know 
better what, if anything, needs doing next by way 
of still further revision. 

As respects any general revision of the Bible in 
the direction of a new translation, there is one 
obstacle which at present, I think, is insuperable. 
Most of our Biblical scholars, while well up in 
Hebrew and Greek, are not well instructed or 
thoroughly skilled in the niceties of English speech. 
More especially is this the case in respect of what 
we call classical, as distinguished from colloquial, 
English. Such masters in the use of ''English 
undefiled" as James Russell Lowell and Oliver 
Wendell Holmes are not to be found among oiu* 
clergy — at least I know of none ; and only a man so 



Biblical Revision 285 



qualified should presume to think of improving 
(except as to sundry idioms and obsolete words) 
the magnificent diction of the greater part of our 
present revision. Future scholarship may supply 
men thus qualified, but just now they are exceed- 
ingly scarce. I feel safe in saying of any man of 
the present generation of scholars who thinks he 
can make a better general translation of the Bible 
than the one we now have, that if he does not 
thereby betray his incompetence for the work, he 
at least shows that he has not fully "sized up" 
its difficulties. 

In making these suggestions, I am perfectly 
aware of sundry possible counter-statements, and 
particularly : 

(i) That any alteration in the text, either by 
addition or omission, is authoritatively and forever 
forbidden by Rev. xxii., 18, 19. 

But the word "book" as used in these verses 
means the book of Revelation, and no other. A 
New Testament "book" did not exist at that time. 
All existing data and all present-known facts fiilly 
justify the conclusion that our New Testament 
canon was not made up or compiled into a single 
"book" till many years later. And it further ap- 
pears that the right of this book of Revelation to be 
included in the canon at all was in serious dispute 
among the leading ecclesiastical authorities of the 
church till near the end of the second or the begin- 
ning of the third century. Hence this particular 
citation is not relevant to the point in question. 



286 Biblical Revision 



(2) Another possible reply may be thus stated : 
The Bible as we have it — the whole of it — is given 
to us by divine inspiration, and no finite or htiman 
authority is empowered either to add to or sub- 
tract from its inspired contents. 

If, for example, Genesis xxxviii. is thus divinely 
inspired as an authoritative part of the sacred 
record, then I must admit the siifficiency of this 
reply. To any man who so holds, and is wiUing 
so to preach and teach, my suggestions as above 
given are impious and accordingly should be 
rejected. But it pleases me to believe that the 
Holy Deity specially made known to us by Jesus of 
Nazareth, the God to whom purity in all things 
on the part of His followers is supremely acceptable, 
cannot be honored, but is grossly dishonored by the 
ascription to Him in His perfect hoHness, of any 
such unholiness as this chapter contains. Is this 
heresy? If so, then Jesus of Nazareth was a 
heretic when He denounced the Mosaic law of 
marriage. 

There are a few other matters outside of a new 
translation that might be profitably considered by 
those to whom, in any event, questions of Biblical 
revision must be entrusted. One is the elimination 
of duplicated extracts from old historical records. 
Thus in Isaiah, chapters xxxvi-xxxviii. (except 
xxxviii., 9-22) and xxxix are a repetition of the 
record found in II. Kings, beginning with chap, 
xviii., 13. 

Very considerable portions of Kings and Chroni- 



Biblical Revision 287 

cles are made up of duplicated extracts from the 
ancient records of the kingdoms of Judah and 
Israel, all of which are as uimecessary and as 
objectionable as to have two copies of the Declara- 
tion of Independence in a history of the United 
States. 

The same is true of some of the Psalms. Thus 
David's thanksgiving hymn of I. Chronicles xvi., 
8-36 reappears in two or three of the Psalms 
(Ixxviii., 43-68; cv., 1-15, etc.), where it is divided 
up into sections, probably for purposes of con- 
venience in the musical services of the Temple. 
As the reasons for such division no longer exist, 
at least outside the Jewish synagogue, and as 
for Christian use the undivided hymn is much to 
be preferred, the broken-up sections might well 
be omitted. 

Many improvements along these lines might be 
made in the interest of the general reader, without 
injury or loss to anybody — except the printer. 



J 



INDEX 

PAGB 

Acts: Early Church and Empire 80 

Acts: Paul and the Empire 95 

Angels, Agency of 173 

Babel 259 

Baptism for the Dead 177 

Bible, Contents of the iii 

Biblical Revision 278 

Civilization, Beginnings of 249 

Creation, The Story of 269 

Deluge, The 254 

Faith Cure 183 

Fall: The Penalty 262 

Heaven 219 

Hell 227 

Immortality: History of Doctrine 215 

Japhetic Gospel, A 59 

Jesus, The Earthly Life of i 

Jesus, The Wisdom of 15 

John, The Gospel of 116 

Lost Beliefs 173 

Paul, The Gosfel of 45 

Paul, The Writings of 28 

Paul and the Empire 69 

Peter 130 

Protestantism, Defects of 158 

Rainbow-Promise 265 

Resurrection, The: History of Doctrine 215 

Resurrection, The: Origin of Doctrine 143 

Revelation: A Drama 190 

Satan 231 

Sin 240 

Traditions, Three Ancient 247 



289 



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